Doctors Across India Protest Rape and Murder of Medic in Kolkata

Wednesday 14 August 2024 - 08:00

Hospital services have been disrupted in several Indian cities as doctors nationwide protested the rape and murder of a trainee medic in Kolkata, according to authorities and media reports.

On Monday, thousands of doctors marched in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, and other cities within the state to denounce the killing at a government-run hospital. They demanded justice for the victim and better security measures.

The 31-year-old trainee doctor's body was discovered on Friday inside the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. An autopsy revealed that she had been raped before being murdered.

A police volunteer was subsequently arrested in connection with the crime.

On Tuesday, protests spread to other parts of India. In Maharashtra, the western state home to Mumbai, more than 8,000 government doctors halted work in all hospital departments except emergency services, according to local media reports.

The Federation of Resident Doctors Association had called for a nationwide halt to elective services in hospitals starting Monday.

Emergency services were suspended on Tuesday in nearly all government-run medical college hospitals in Kolkata, according to state official NS Nigam. Nigam told Reuters that the government was assessing the impact on health services.

In New Delhi, junior doctors, clad in white coats, held posters reading, “Doctors are not punching bags,” as they staged a protest outside a large government hospital. “Pedestrian working conditions, inhuman workloads, and workplace violence are the reality,” the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest doctors' group, wrote in a letter to Health Minister JP Nadda before meeting with him for talks on Tuesday.

Similar protests in cities such as Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and in Goa, a western tourist state, disrupted hospital services, according to reports.

IMA General Secretary Anil Kumar J. Nayak told ANI news agency that his group had urged Nadda to enhance security at medical facilities.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare did not immediately comment.

“We believe a free and fair environment is necessary for doctors; otherwise, skilled work is not possible. We also demand the installation of CCTV cameras in hospitals,” a doctor at Gobind Ballabh Pant Hospital in Agartala, a city in northeastern India, told the Indian Express.

A high court in Kolkata ordered the transfer of the criminal investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), indicating that the authorities are treating the case as a national priority.

India’s medical education regulator, the National Medical Commission, issued a notice to all medical institutions, calling for CCTV cameras to be installed in sensitive areas and for adequate security staff to be present, the newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The notice also recommended that all corridors and the campus be well lit in the evening to ensure staff could walk safely from one place to another.

Doctors in India’s crowded and often unsanitary government hospitals have long complained of being overworked and underpaid. They also assert that insufficient efforts are made to curb violence against them by those dissatisfied with the medical care provided.