Junior doctors, students and the police prevented supporters of the BJP and the Left from going inside the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on Saturday as the suspected rape and murder of a 31-year postgraduate trainee of the hospital turned into a political slugfest.

The junior doctors said anyone was welcome to come and join their protests but they would not allow any political colour to smear their demand for justice.

The BJP had first come waving its party flag and promising to fight for the students in the afternoon. But the junior doctors, who were staging a sit-in near the main gate of the hospital shouted “Go Back” slogans once they saw the party’s flag.

Sajal Ghosh, BJP councillor from Ward 50 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, did not take calls from The Telegraph.

“There will be many attempts to provoke us but we will not play into their hands,” one of the protesting junior doctors kept saying on a microphone.

Later in the afternoon, SFI supporters also tried to enter the campus. This time, too, some of the protesters inside shouted the “Go Back” slogan.

CPM leaders Fuad Halim and Kaustav Chatterjee were in that group. “We have come here to support the protesting doctors and the police did not allow us in,” said Halim.

The SFI supporters and the police got involved in multiple rounds of clashes.

Later, Mohammad Salim, the state secretary of CPM, led a rally from the hospital to
the Shyambazar five-point crossing in support of the protesting doctors.

In the afternoon, a rally of students and junior doctors from Medical College Kolkata to RG Kar Medical College and Hospital went through the Shyambazar crossing to the hospital.

An officer of Kolkata Police’s traffic department said multiple rallies forced them to close the road in front of the RG Kar hospital.