Around 200 postgraduate and intern doctors staged a protest outside the Vellore Government Medical College Hospital in Adukkamparai after a 40-year-old male attendant (patient's caretaker) allegedly assaulted a female intern doctor inside the female patients’ ward on Friday evening.

According to sources, the man had called the 23-year-old doctor after she checked the blood pressure of his patient and moved on to attend another. “As she was with another patient, she couldn’t respond immediately. The man kept calling her,” a source said, stated a report by The New Indian Express.

He then allegedly, in an inebriated state, grabbed her neck with both hands and pushed her against the wall. Another female intern who rushed to help her was also allegedly pushed by him.

Doctors said this was not the first such incident — eight months ago, a male postgraduate doctor was attacked by an attender. “We are protesting for our safety and demanding that an FIR be registered. We will not disperse until then,” a doctor said.

A male postgraduate doctor who was nearby intervened and stopped the assault, as per the report by The New Indian Express.

The deputy Superintendent of Police and the hospital dean reached the spot and assured the doctors that the issue would be resolved.