‘I was in so much pain’: Doctor tells how he was bashed with a baseball bat and left for dead in hate crime

WALKING home one night, Mukesh Haikerwal was brutally attacked with a baseball bat. They took something far more precious than the top doctor’s wallet.

MUKESH HAIKERWAL is an intelligent man of inexhaustible manners.

Two things he used well to become a good doctor and an effective head of the Australian Medical Association.

Even when campaigning hard at politicians and bureaucrats for the rights of doctors and their patients, it was always done with that soft-accented voice coming from a polite face.

Those manners make it even more painful to remember that late on Grand Final day in 2008 — just after one of the many tedious Hawthorn wins — Mukesh was grabbed by a gang of selfish idiots, robbed and almost beaten to death with a baseball bat.

BASHED DOCTOR FACES ATTACKERS IN COURT

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal with bandages covering his wounds.

Dr Haikerwell returns to the scene of his attack. Picture: David Smith

Returning to the scene of the crime

Now standing back in the park where it happened — a very strollable little reserve in Williamstown — Mukesh looks around and refuses to let the memory of what happened cover him over.

He understands the robbery. “Bad things happen. People get robbed. It’s not going to go much further than that. You want the money? Take the money,” he recalls, but his face twists with confusion and that soft voice goes higher when he tries to understand the violence that came next.

The gang — three men and a teenager — took what they wanted, then caved in the left side of Mukesh’s head with the bat. The noise was later described in court as the sound of someone hitting a “sixer” across one of Melbourne’s most beautiful suburbs. It must have been a satisfying noise for them, because they laughed as their latest conquest went down. Mukesh was one of 34 in the gang’s spree across 11 nights.

“It was just their idea of having fun,” he says.

ATTACKERS JAILED FOR LEAVING DOCTOR FIGHTING FOR LIFE

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal walks through Dennis Reserve Williamstown, where the brutal attack happened. Photo: David Smith

How an old Nokia proved a lifesaver

When he talks about the pain of being struck, he’s half clinician, half victim.

He remembers being on the ground with raindrops falling on his face and thinking death might be the only thing that would take away the agony.

“I was in so much pain I thought, if somebody finds me, that’s fine. I’ll just let time take its course.”

But the thought of his wife and children made him move and find his Nokia phone.

He smiles when he says “my wonderful Nokia”.

He knows it’s now an antique in this big-screen smartphone world, but he confesses that he still has it.

Mukesh has never seemed the sentimental type — there’s too much to do to bother with holding on to old things — but this is more than a pudgy old phone. It pulled him out of death when he called his wife.

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal recalls the bashing after the perpetrators were sentenced in the County Court in 2009.

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal is back at work in his Altona North clinic five months after the attack.

He knew the park very well, but he couldn’t explain to her where he was. The gang had already taken something from him. The good brain and the kind voice were beaten out of connection with each other.

But he must have told her enough, because Mukesh’s wife and brother, both doctors, came to get him. And they knew how much trouble he was in and got him to the hospital. Another half an hour and he would have been dead.

He stayed in that hospital bed for four months, and then went to rehab learning to talk and walk again.

A reminder of stubborn survival

“I’m so lucky to be alive,” he says now standing on the spot.

He’s brought along the pair of glasses he was wearing that night, still in the same Victoria Police envelope since 2008. It’s something he hasn’t shown anyone, including his children.

And they’re similar to the pair he wears today, which makes the thought that much more horrible.

The left lens is gone and the metal frame curves into the shape of a baseball bat.

Unlike the Nokia, he doesn’t keep it for sentimentality, it’s more like a reminder of stubborn survival.

You can see his determination not to let that moment and this place change him, but he knows that’s something that’s just not possible.

“It’s like being in a video game and you can’t hit reset,” he admits.

Mukesh still has his exacting manners, but there’s an innocence that’s been shaved off him. The tone of his soft voice has lifted harder, and he’s a tougher fighter against injustice and an even more dogged campaigner.

But for the selfish gang that nearly killed him, he doesn’t give them much credit.

“They gave me nothing. I thank them for nothing.”

Watch the video at heraldsun.com.au

Justin Smith is a 3AW presenter

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