Doctors of R G Kar Medical College to continue their protest

Kolkata: The junior doctors at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata will continue their protest after one of their colleagues was raped and murdered on the third floor of the 138-year-old institution on August 9 last.

The protesting junior doctors at the RGKMCH in Kolkata told journalists on Sunday that they would continue with the cease-work stir as long as all the perpetrators of the heinous crime would not be brought to justice, the former principal of the medical college and hospital Sandip Ghosh would not be suspended and the Kolkata Police commissioner, Vineet Goyal, would not resign and would not be brought under the ambit of the probe.

The rape and murder of the 31-year-old postgraduate doctor triggered widespread outrage. The protest by her colleagues at the RGKMCH spread to other medical colleges across West Bengal. With nearly 6000 junior doctors in over 20 hospitals not working for more than a fortnight, the healthcare services across the state have been severely affected. The senior doctors had also joined the protest but returned to work.

The protest also spread to other states. But after an appeal from the Supreme Court, the doctors in other states called off the stir.

The junior doctors of the RGKMCH, however, said on Sunday that they would not call off the stir because they believed that some of the perpetrators of the crime might be roaming freely and that was why they were not assured about their security.

The Kolkata Police arrested a civic volunteer, a contractual employee of the law-enforcing agency, on August 10, just a day after the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor was found raped and murdered at the seminar room of the Department of Chest Medicine of the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital.

The protesting students, however, alleged that Sanjay Roy, the arrested civic volunteer, might not be the only perpetrator.

They also demanded that the state government should suspend the RGKMCH’s former principal Dr Sandip Ghosh, who had allegedly tried to make a cover-up attempt after the body of the young doctor was found early on August 9. The allegations of corruption and financial irregularities at the RGKMCH also came to the fore.

The Calcutta High Court already handed over the probes into the rape and murder as well as the corruption at the RGKMCH to the Central Bureau of Investigation.