Some sanitation workers while on duty in Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas were allegedly attacked by a group of locals on Friday in a neighbourhood at Khategaon town. The police have arrested four persons in this regard, an official said, on Saturday.

One of the sanitation worker was attacked with  an axe when he was cleaning the locality.  He sustained severe injuries and has been admitted to a hospital.

The shocking attack came close on the heels of another such incident when healthcare workers and civic officials were attacked by a mob of angry locals in the state, as they visited the area to screen residents for signs of novel coronavirus infection on April 2.

A video shows a mob holding sticks and surrounding the sanitation worker, with one of them sitting on a motorbike. They push and pull the worker ripping his shirt apart and the mob holding sticks drags him away.

A local resident Aadil who the police said instigated the attack, his brother and father too had been arrested.

“Sanitation workers from the municipal corporation were working in Koyla Mohalla. Adil attacked Deepak and his colleagues with an axe. When he tried to hold the axe, he got injured. Doctors referred him to Dewas on his complaint. We have registered a case of attempt to murder and under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,” police officer Sajjan Singh was quoted by NDTV as saying.

Earlier in Indore, two women doctors were injured in one such the attack and had to be rescued by police. The shocking attack came two days after locals from the Ranipura area of the city allegedly spat at officials and abused them during screening procedures. In a shocking video of the attack, two healthcare workers dressed in light blue PPE (personal protective equipment) suits can be seen running from a small group of locals who are throwing stones and what appears to be a large piece of plastic at them.

As the minute-long video shows out, the small group of locals becomes a mob of around 100 angry residents shouting abuses, throwing sticks and stones and chasing them down the narrow lane.

Indore had 76 per cent of all coronavirus reported from Madhya Pradesh so far. Multiple reports of attacks on healthcare workers have emerged from across the nation.

In the state capital Bhopal some men threw stones at a cop while he was trying to enforce the lockdown. Police arrested five people while slapping the National Security Act (NSA) on two of them.

Madhya Pradesh has 1310 positive cases of Coronavirus in the state and without a cabinet to fight out , the death toll has risen to 69.