Kolkata rape-murder case: Junior doctors to continue cease work stir despite Supreme Court’s order

Kolkata: Notwithstanding the order of the Supreme Court, the junior doctors protesting against the rape and murder of a colleague at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata decided to continue the cease work if Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government does not accept all their demands by 5 pm on Tuesday.

The protesting junior doctors accused the state government of presenting false information before the Supreme Court. They also expressed disappointment over the order of the apex court, which asked them to end their cease-work stir and return to work by 5 pm on Tuesday.

The agitating junior doctors decided to take out a protest march to the Swasthya Bhavan, the headquarters of the Department of Health and Family Welfare of the West Bengal government in Kolkata, on Tuesday. They said that if the state government did not accept their demands, they would start a sit-in demonstration in front of the Swasthya Bhavan itself.

Dr Debashish Halder and other protesting junior doctors had a news conference late on Monday and said that the state government had not come forward with any goodwill gesture and tried to put all the blame on the Central Bureau of Investigation to cover up its own misdeeds and failures, including negligence of the Kolkata Police after the body of the victim was found, attempts to destroy evidence and rampant corruption in the healthcare institutions.

They said that the actions taken so far against RGKMCH’s former principal Dr Sandip Ghosh, and a few others were nothing but an eyewash.

The demands of the junior doctors include the resignation of the state’s health secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam and police commissioner Vineet Goyal, apart from expeditious justice for the slain medic with exemplary punishment for all the culprits. They demanded that the people involved with the destruction of evidence must also be brought to justice.

The junior doctors had a few days back marched to the headquarters of the Kolkata Police, demanding the resignation of Goyal for failing to properly investigate the rape and murder of the young postgraduate trainee doctor at the RGKMCH and prevent the alleged destruction of evidence.

Nigam incurred the wrath of the junior doctors after he joined Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in making public the official data about the impact of the cease-work agitation by the junior doctors on the healthcare system of the state. He said that seven lakh outdoor patients and seventy thousand indoor patients had been denied medical care due to the cease work stir by the junior doctors. He also said that over 7,000 surgeries had been deferred in the state government’s hospitals and 1,500 patients in catheterization laboratories had been left untreated.

The state government earlier in the day informed the Supreme Court that 23 patients had died due to the lack of timely and adequate medical care during the cease-work agitation by the junior doctors.

The protesting junior doctors, however, argued that they were not the main pillar of the healthcare system of the state and, if the state government was blaming their cease-work stir for the collapse of the system, then it revealed the lack of senior doctors at the public hospitals.

They reiterated their demand for ensuring security for all the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers in the hospitals of the state government.

Just a day after the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor was found raped and murdered on the third floor of the RGKMCH, the Kolkata Police arrested one of its contractual staff, Sanjay Ray, for the crime. The Central Bureau of Investigation on August 14 took over the probe and the custody of Ray on August 14 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.

Some of the protesting junior doctors of the RGKMCH on Monday confronted a team of CBI officials and asked them about the delay in the investigation. The CBI officials had gone to the RGKMCH to examine the crime scene.