TMC chief Mamata Banerjee.
Credit: PTI Photo
Kolkata: The blame game between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) intensified after a gang of miscreants vandalised the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital where a trainee physician was recently raped and murdered.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the BJP and the CPI(M) of orchestrating the vandalism at the hospital run by the West Bengal government. Her heir apparent and ruling TMC’s general secretary Abhishek Bandopadhyay, a member of the Lok Sabha, called Vinit Goyal, the commissioner of Kolkata Police, and demanded the arrest of all the culprits responsible for vandalism within 24 hours.
The BJP and the CPI(M), on the other hand, alleged that the ruling TMC itself engaged goons to carry out the attacks to erase the evidence in connection with the rape and murder of the trainee doctor and to intimidate the protesting medics.
The Kolkata Police arrested at least nine of the miscreants who vandalised the hospital. The cops also issued pictures of goons, marking them out from the photos and videos taken during the incident.
Even as thousands of women took to the streets across West Bengal and staged 'Reclaim the Night protest' in the late hours on Wednesday and early hours on Thursday to demand justice for the 31-year-old victim, a gang of nearly 40 goons stormed into the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, pelted stones at the cops, vandalised the makeshift podium of the protesting junior doctors, damaged a police vehicle, two auto-rickshaws, and several two-wheelers. They also vandalised several departments of the hospital, including the Emergency Ward.
The goons targeted the protesting doctors and assaulted many of them. They broke CCTV cameras too. The Kolkata Police, however, claimed later that the 'scene of the rape and murder – the Seminar Room of the Department of Chest Medicine on the fourth floor of the hospital' – remained “intact” and had not been “touched”.
Banerjee said she does not hold the students or doctors responsible for their protests and instead, she accused certain political parties of attempting to incite trouble.
C V Ananda Bose, the governor of West Bengal, visited the spot later in the day. “I am with you,” he told the protesting junior doctors, who have been continuing a cease-work protest ever since their colleague was found raped and murdered on August 9. The protest spread to other hospitals, disrupting healthcare services across the state.
"Police are looking into the matter. I don't have any complaints against students or agitating doctors. But there are certain political parties, which are trying to foment trouble. If you go through the video, you will get to see what happened,” the chief minister and the TMC supremo told journalists outside the Raj Bhavan in Kolkata later in the day.
“Two hospital floors have been destroyed, medicines looted and infrastructure and equipment severely damaged," she said, adding that it would take a lot of time and money to rebuild it.
“Some outsiders who are political elements and want to foment trouble in Bengal - the Left and the BJP - have together unleashed this (vandalism),” Banerjee said.
The CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim blamed the ruling TMC and the state government for the vandalism. Suvendu Adhikari, the BJP heavyweight and the leader of the opposition in the West Bengal legislative assembly, also accused the TMC of hiring goons to attack the protesting doctors and destroy the evidence of the crime.
He wrote to the Union Government demanding the deployment of central forces in and around the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital. The BJP called for a shutdown across the state for two hours on Friday.
The Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) also called for a 12-hour shutdown across the state on the same day.
Banerjee, however, said that her government would not support a shutdown.
A civic volunteer – a contractual employee of the Kolkata Police – was arrested for raping and murdering the trainee physician just a day after her body was found in the seminar room on the fourth floor of the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
The Calcutta High Court already handed over the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation.