A mob beat up a doctor and his assistant at a “sealed-off” private clinic in Pabna’s Chatmohar upazila on Monday when they allegedly tried to flee from the operation theatre leaving a patient in critical condition.

The patient Taslima Khatun, 35, wife of Ismail Hossain of Bothor in the upazila, died that night, said police.

Officer-in-Charge Sheikh Nasir Uddin of Chatmohar Police Station said Taslima had been admitted to the Chatmohar Islamic Hospital on Monday afternoon with labour pains.

She was immediately taken to the operating table and the hospital surgeon Saddam Hossain performed a c-section to deliver a girl, said the police.

But as the mother’s condition deteriorated, the doctor along with his assistant Asaduzzaman tried to flee from the operation theatre, the OC said quoting the patient’s relatives.

The family members of Taslima caught the duo at that time and they along with others in the hospital beat them up, he added.

Police went to the hospital and detained the doctor and his assistant.

Taslima was moved to Pabna Medical College Hospital where she died of excessive bleeding at 9:30pm, said Baizid-Ul-Islam, resident doctor at Chatmohar Upazila Health Complex.

The infant was healthy and was handed over to the relatives, the doctor said.

OC Nasir said the clinic was sealed-off by a mobile court of the upazila administration on July 3 for operating on patients in unhygienic condition and without general anesthesia.

Pabna Civil Surgeon Mehedi Iqbal said they had no idea how the hospital reopened.

“We have given immediate order to shut the hospital down again.”

The Daily Star correspondent tried several times to contact the owner of the clinic Amir Hossain Bablu over phone but he could not be reached.