AGARTALA: More than 40 expecting mothers and 23 newborns had a narrow escape from a devastating fire at the Indira Gandhi Memorial(IGM) hospital here on Wednesday.Health minister Badal Choudhury said there were no casualties reported.The fire broke out in the maternity ward of obstetrics and gynaecology department after an electric short-circuit during lunchtime, when the operation theatre was in function and the OPD of the hospital was full of patients.The patient parties and doctors were able to evacuate the expecting mothers awaiting surgery and the newborn babies immediately before the fire engulfed the building. Fire service volunteers controlled the blaze and as a result there was not much damage.The photo journalists association of Tripura alleged that a few doctors of the hospital turned violent with camera persons covering the fire and found that the extinguishers were not functioning. "The doctors and staff of the hospital initially objected to the presence of the photo journalists and violently attacked them. Two camerapersons of a local channel were manhandled and three cameras were destroyed," Animesh Sharma , a victim, alleged.Agartala Govt Medical College (AGMC) authorities accommodated the patients referred from IGM."The 36-bed gynaecology department has been managing more than 60 patients with insufficient manpower in AGMC for the last few years. Today, after the accident, more than 60 patients were referred here who need immediate surgery, but we are not being able to manage them," said a senior doctor of AGMC."We don't understand why it was that only a small unit of such a hospital was affected and all the patients shifted to AGMC. They could have shifted them to any other vacant part of the building. But in AGMC, now patients are lying on the floor with labour pain, as the number of doctors and infrastructure here are insufficient," alleged another doctor of the department.

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