A “people’s chargesheet” put up by a forum comprising senior doctors and citizens’ groups blames the state’s health minister, Mamata Banerjee, for the unrestricted access that a civic volunteer like the one accused of the rape and murder at RG Kar had in a government healthcare facility.

The Joint Platform of Doctors (JPD) also held the state’s home minister, a portfolio
also held by chief minister Mamata, responsible for the police failing to avert an attack on RG Kar Medical College and Hospital past midnight on August 14.

The so-called chargesheet, a printed document circulated among those who attended a protest meeting at Rani Rashmoni Avenue as well as printed on a large flex that was put up at the venue, did not name Mamata but held the health minister and home minister responsible on many accounts.

“We are not demanding her resignation now. We have only submitted the people’s chargesheet. The trial will now begin and finally the verdict will come out,” said Tamonas Chaudhuri, a senior doctor and a member of the JPD, an umbrella organisation of various senior doctors’ associations who have supported the junior doctors’ protests.

The junior doctors have so far refrained from directly blaming the chief minister for the crime.

The JPD gave the call for the Janatar Chargesheet (people’s chargesheet) programme at Rani Rashmoni Avenue on Saturday.

Besides senior doctors, many junior doctors, civil rights activists and former Supreme Court judge Asok Ganguly spoke at the meeting.

The chargesheet held the state’s health secretary and home secretary responsible for the state of affairs.

“How can an off-duty volunteer have unrestricted access to all parts of a hospital at night? No one stops him? No one notices what he is doing? Even CCTVs fail to record adequate evidence of his movements? How insecure are doctors and patients in a hospital?... You are being held responsible for this health secretary, minister and associates,” the first charge said.

The second one said: “Five days after the murder, you failed to prevent the attack on August 14 midnight. This again proved how threatened patients and doctors are inside a hospital. The people are holding you responsible, the police commissioner, the minister of the department and the secretary.”

The chargesheet also held the health department responsible for supply of fake medicines and corruption in handling in biomedical waste.

The CBI, which is probing the rape and murder of the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee, filed its primary chargesheet last month and named Sanjay Roy, a civic volunteer, as the lone accused.

Roy was arrested by Kolkata Police the day after the crime. Kolkata Police were then probing the case.

The trial of the case is scheduled to begin at a Sealdah court on Monday.

Debashis Halder, a junior doctor at Medical College Kolkata and one of the faces of the junior doctors’ protests, said that the delay in the Supreme Court would erode people’s faith in the justice delivery system.

“In the Supreme Court, it is tarikh pe tarikh (one date after another). We are not happy with the way the CBI probe has progressed. If a case as sensitive as this one goes this way, think about what common people have to go through to get justice,” Halder said at the meeting.

On Saturday, the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Association, an outfit of junior doctors different from the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front, held a mass convention at Star
Theatre.

The association demanded capital punishment for the guilty in the rape and murder case and wanted it to be pronounced before January 26.