Two-and-a-half-year-old Shubham died on Wednesday night, an hour after he was brought to the hospital. The doctors say that the child's relatives manhandled their colleague who was on duty at that time. They are demanding the arrest of Shubham's father, Bishwambar Dayal Gupta, and his relatives. The child's family have lodged a complaint with the police, accusing the doctor on duty of neglect.

Shubham was brought to the hospital after he started vomiting blood. His father says that a month ago the child was taken to the same hospital after he swallowed a pin. Shubham vomited out the pin a day after the incident. His father says that the child had been fine till he started throwing up blood yesterday.

According to him, when they took the child to the hospital, the doctor on duty, Sanjay Agarwal,asked them to get a new admission card made. ``If he wanted to know the case history, I had the old card with me,'' he says. ``I got a new card made though the two officials at the counter were drunk. This took me over 15 minutes and then the doctor asked me to go and buy a syringe.''

Gupta says that when Agarwal was making these demands, one of his colleagues said that the child seemed to be serious. ``Some of the hospital policemen on duty also tried to persuade the doctor to attend to the child. But he snapped at us, asking us to mind our own business,'' he adds.

``By the time I returned to the hospital with the syringe, Shubham had begun gasping. The doctors immediately gave him an IV drip and oxygen.'' The child died by 8 pm.

The doctors say that Shubham was in a critical condition when he was brought to the hospital. ``In the 20 minutes that the child was here, the chief doctors in the emergency, the ICU and the chief medical officer were consulted,'' says medical superintendent AshokVirmani.

Dr Vivek Goyal, vice-president of the resident doctors association, says, ``The anguish of the relatives is understandable. But they should have lodged a complaint and not manhandled the doctor after the child died. We are asking for the arrests to prevent such incidents.''

Dr Sanjay Agarwal refused to speak to The Indian Express. The doctors supporting him say that the incident highlights the insecure atmosphere they work in. ``The police are also with the patient's relatives and have asked us to apologise,'' they add. The Station House Officer of the Sabji Mandi police station has apparently asked for a medical checkup to be conducted on Dr Sanjay Agarwal so that he can make a medico-legal case. Virmani says this is unacceptable.

A post-mortem was performed on the child's body after it lay in the mortuary of the civil hospital for nearly 24 hours. The delay followed a dispute over who should conduct the post-mortem. Virmani says he refused to give a letter to the police allowing thepost-mortem to be conducted in another hospital. Later, a panel of doctors - two from the Civil Hospital and one from the Maulana Azad Medical College - was formed for the purpose.