Ripples of the doctors’ protest spread from Calcutta to Delhi, Chandigarh and Uttar Pradesh on Monday, four days after a postgraduate trainee was found raped and murdered in a seminar hall at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in the Bengal capital.
Resident doctors, be it in Calcutta or Delhi, had two demands – justice and security.
“We had to go through rigorous preparation to reach a medical college and study to become doctors. We did not come here to be murdered,” said a resident doctor on cease work at the SSKM Hospital in Calcutta.
In the national capital’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, responding to a call from the Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association, medicos held a protest outside India’s most respected medical institute.
Apart from AIIMS, resident doctors at the Maulana Azad Medical College, RML Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College, VMMC and Safdarjung Hospital, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, GTB, IHBAS, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Medical College and National Institute of TB and Respiratory Disease Hospital are on strike.
Protests were also reported from hospitals in Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh.
“We want our work environment to be safe. If we are not safe in our work place how are we expected to fulfil our duties?” asked a protesting resident doctor at AIIMS.
At RG Kar Medical College Hospital in Calcutta, the striking doctors raised slogans: “No safety, no duty.”
In Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, junior doctors who usually see patients in the emergency ward were conspicuous by their absence. The emergency ward was not working on Monday morning.
The protesters are not satisfied with the police probe even though the Calcutta police’s special investigation team has arrested a 35-year-old civic cop, Sanjay Roy, who was working as a guard at the hospital’s trauma ward and had easy access to all sections of the hospital.
“We want an impartial investigation into the murder of our colleague, either by the CBI or a sitting magistrate,” said a protesting junior doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. “We are dissatisfied with the current police investigation and will continue our protest till justice is served and the state ensures foolproof security for all doctors and healthcare workers.”
Dr Biplab Chandra, state secretary of Medical Service Centre and an alumnus of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, told The Telegraph Online that the movement would continue.
“We suspect that the administration and the police are trying to shield the actual perpetrators. Some of our representatives were invited for talks by the commissioner of police for talks on Sunday. When they asked for the post-mortem report to be shared with them, the police refused. Why have they refused to share the post-mortem report with our representatives? We suspect they will change the actual findings,” said Chandra.
While in Delhi, the outpatient departments, operation theatres and ward duties are shut, the emergency services in the hospitals are functioning.
In the city medical colleges and also in the districts, the emergency services and others were shut.