Two-and-a-half-year-old Shubham died last night, an hour after he was brought to the hospital. While the doctors demand the arrest of Shubham's father, Bishawambar Dayal Gupta, and his relatives saying they manhandled their colleague who was on duty, the child's family have lodged a complaint accusing the doctor 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 later. 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 policemen on duty in the hospital 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 p.m.

The doctors say Shubham was in a critical condition when 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 Ashok Virmani. 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. We are asking for arrests to prevent such incidents.'' Dr Sanjay Agarwal refused to speak to Express Newsline. Fellow doctors supporting him say the incident highlights the insecure atmosphere they work in. ``The police are also with the patient's relatives and have asked us to apologise.'' The SHO of the Sabzi Mandi area has apparently asked for a checkup to be conducted on Dr Sanjay Agarwal so that he can make a medico-legal case. Virmani says this is unacceptable.