Protests marking one month of the rape and murder of a trainee medic at a government-run hospital, in Kolkata.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Kolkata: With the month-long outrage over the rape and murder of a doctor at a hospital in Kolkata continuing to scald the Trinamool Congress, differences within Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party over her government’s responses to the crime, rampant corruption it brought to the fore and subsequent protests reached a flashpoint on Sunday.
As the ‘City of Joy’ completed a month in angst, Jawahar Sircar, the Trinamool Congress’s member in the Rajya Sabha, called it quits, conveying his displeasure over “extravagant corruption” in West Bengal as well as the state government’s “faulty handling” of the “spontaneous public movement” following the brutal rape and murder of the doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9.
Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, another TMC member in the Rajya Sabha, has also been relentlessly striking discordant notes ever since the August 9 rape and murder of the young post-graduate trainee doctor triggered widespread outrage. So have been several other leaders of the party, which has been ruling West Bengal since 2011.
Sircar, a retired Indian Administrative Service officer, however, was the first to call it quits, calling for an immediate course correction. He wrote to Banerjee on Sunday, conveying his decision not only to resign as a member of the Rajya Sabha but also to “totally dissociate” himself from politics.
He gave vent to his displeasure against the TMC government in West Bengal, even as Kolkata and other cities across the state continued to witness several protest marches and long “human chains” with people from all walks of life taking to the streets demanding justice for the deceased doctor. As a month passed after the 31-year-old was found raped and murdered at the seminar room of the Department of Chest Medicine on the third floor of the RGKMCH, a call on social media for the women to come out for yet another midnight protest – third in a month – received an overwhelming response.
“Believe me, the present spontaneous outpouring of public anger is against this unchecked overbearing attitude of the favoured few and the corrupt,” Sircar, whom the TMC sent to the Rajya Sabha in 2021, wrote to Banerjee. He questioned the rationale of terming the agitation political when its mainstream is apolitical. He pointed out that the TMC’s political rivals were trying to fish in troubled waters, but the youths and the common people did not encourage them as they wanted only justice, not politics.
“Let us analyse frankly and realise that the movement is as much for Abhaya (a pseudonym of the victim) as it is against the state government and the party,” Sircar, who was the CEO of the Prasar Bharti from 2012 to 2016, wrote in his letter to the TMC chairperson. “This calls for course correction immediately or else communal forces will capture this state (West Bengal).”
A call from Banerjee, herself, to Sircar in the evening could not make him change his mind.
“I am quitting as (an) MP primarily because of (the) WB (West Bengal) government’s faulty handling of the most spontaneous public movement following the terrible rape-murder case at (the) R G Kar Hospital. Quitting politics— to be with the people in their struggle for justice.
My commitment to values (remains) unchanged,” Sircar, wrote on X.
He referred to the allegations of rampant corruption in West Bengal and noted that the way the local panchayat and municipal leaders had amassed wealth hurt not only him but also the people of West Bengal.
The Kolkata Police on August 10 arrested one of its contractual staff, Sanjay Ray, for raping and murdering the doctor. The Central Bureau of Investigation on August 14 took over the probe on August 13 but did not arrest anyone else in connection with the rape and murder.
The central agency also took over the probe into the allegation of corruption and irregularities at the RGKMCH and arrested the former principal of the college, Sandip Ghosh, for financial misconduct, along with three others. The Enforcement Directorate too joined the probe into corruption at the medical college and hospital.
Sircar wrote to Banerjee that he had suffered patiently hoping that the TMC supremo would directly engage with the protesting junior doctors, who had first started the cease-work stir to demand justice for their slain colleague.
“It has not happened and whatever punitive steps that the government is taking now are too little and quite late,” he wrote to the chief minister. “I think normalcy may have been restored in this state much earlier if the caucus of the corrupt doctors was smashed and those guilty of taking improper administrative actions punished immediately after the scandalous incident happened.”
Ray, another TMC member in the Rajya Sabha, was summoned to the headquarters of Kolkata Police last month after he questioned on X the way the cops dealt with the rape and murder of a doctor at a hospital and suggested that the CBI should arrest the city police commissioner. He also joined the August 14-15 midnight protest. The ruling party also removed another leader, Shantanu Sen, a former member of the Lok Sabha, from the post of its spokesperson after he spoke about rampant irregularities and mismanagement at the RGKMCH.