Kolkata horror: Parents of victim join protest of junior doctors

Kolkata: As countless people in Kolkata and other cities across West Bengal on Wednesday lit candles to protest the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor, the parents of the victim too joined the agitating medics at the hospital where their daughter had worked and had been killed.

A call by civil society activists and the protesting doctors to switch off electric bulbs at homes in the evening and light candles as a mark of protest against the rape and murder received a huge response from across the state.

Thousands of people also took to the streets for candlelight vigils demanding justice for the 31-year-old doctor, who had been found raped and murdered in the seminar room of the Department of Chest Medicine on the fourth floor of the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9.

The leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) also took to the streets, although the organisers of the candlelight protests wanted to keep it apolitical. The civil society activists, including celebrity film stars, also joined the protesting doctors, youths and students.

“I want whoever has taken away my daughter should also have sleepless nights like I am having,” the mother of the victim said as she, her husband, and other members of the bereaved family reached RGKMCH late in the evening and joined the junior doctors protesting against the brutal killing of their colleague.

The father of the victim expressed displeasure over the role of the officers of Kolkata Police and alleged that while postmortem examination of the body had been delayed, the cops got the family to cremate the mortal remains of his daughter hurriedly.

He reiterated the allegation that an official of the hospital had first informed the victim’s family that she had died by suicide.

He also questioned why the police had first registered a case of unnatural death. He went on to allege that the police had offered money, but the family had rejected it.

The victim’s aunt alleged that 300-400 police personnel had kept them surrounded till the cremation of the body.

The Kolkata Police arrested a civic volunteer, a contractual member of its support staff, for raping and murdering the doctor a day after her body was found. The Central Bureau of Investigation took over the probe into rape and murder on August 14.

With the incident bringing to the fore allegations of rampant corruption and irregularities at the RGKMCH, the Calcutta High Court on August 23 also ordered the CBI to take over the probe into it. The central agency arrested Dr Sandip Ghosh, who was the principal of the RGKMCH when the young doctor was raped and murdered, on September 2 for financial misconduct.

The rape and murder of the doctor triggered widespread outrage not only across West Bengal but also in other states as well as in the United States and the United Kingdom. The junior doctors, who continued protests, alleged a cover-up attempt by the hospital authorities and Kolkata Police.