Junior doctors marched from the state medical council office to Swasthya Bhavan on Friday raising questions about why the state health department has yet to give its nod to prosecute former RG Kar Medical College principal Sandip Ghosh and a house staff for alleged corruption at the hospital.
The march, with far fewer participants compared to the protest rallies organised by junior doctors between August and October, also demanded to know why doctors Avik De and Birupaksha Biswas, against whom inquiries were started following allegations of misconduct, were taken back into the council after being barred from its activities.
The parents of the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor who was raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9, which triggered the protests by junior medics, joined Friday’s march.
The father said they were still hopeful about taking their demand for justice to the Union home ministry. “We are trying and it will happen,” the father said when asked whether they were still keen on visiting the ministry.
The parents had earlier expressed their wish to meet Union home minister Amit Shah.
On November 26, the parents met BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly, and sought his support to get justice for their daughter. They also met Naushad Siddiqui, the Indian Secular Front MLA.
“We want to increase the pressure on the CBI and the administration,” the father said on Friday. The parents, however, said they have
faith in the judicial process and the CBI, which is investigating the rape and murder as well as complaints of financial irregularities at RG Kar
hospital.
“We have faith in the process. The CBI will take some time,” he said.
Friday’s rally, joined by around 350 people, started around 4.15pm and reached Swasthya Bhavan, the headquarters of the state health department, around 6pm. The state medical council office and Swasthya Bhavan both are in Salt Lake.
A team of junior doctors met a senior official of the department and submitted a memorandum.
“We want to know why De and Biswas were taken back into the council? We also want to know why the state government is not giving its nod to prosecute Sandip Ghosh and Ashis Pandey (a house staff at RG Kar),” said Debashis Halder, one of the faces of the junior doctors’ protests and a senior resident at Medical College Kolkata.
A letter sent to the health department — which the junior doctors shared with reporters — mentioned that the charges against De were proven in a departmental inquiry. A committee was formed to investigate the allegations against Biswas but there is no information yet about its progress.
“An inquiry report is a confidential document and is not meant to be revealed to the public. Who are they to ask for the report?” Biswas told The Telegraph on Friday.
Calls to De from this newspaper on Friday went unanswered.
This newspaper reported on November 29 that a Sealdah court did not take cognisance of an 80-page chargesheet against Ghosh and Pandey as the CBI was still awaiting the state’s concurrence.
An official in the state health department had earlier said they had received a huge set of papers a few days ago seeking concurrence to prosecute Ghosh and Pandey.
“Our officials will examine the papers and respond. Whatever we do has to be legally tenable. It will take some time,” the official had said.
“Ghosh is an employee of the state government but I am not sure if any nod is required to prosecute Pandey. A house staff is not an employee of
the state government. Still, we will examine the matter,” he said.
Among those who marched on Friday was Chandreyi Gupta, a doctor who retired from SSKM Hospital in 2012. “When we were students, we would happily do night duty as it allowed us to learn. I shudder to think that a doctor can be raped and killed inside a medical college,” she said.
