The spine opened the barricades, but there was no solution found.

The 24-hour impasse between protesting junior doctors and the cops broke on Tuesday evening when Calcutta police commissioner Vineet Goyal relented and met a group of 22 protesters who are demanding his resignation for his force’s handling of the rape and murder of a young doctor at RG Kar and the vandalism in the medical college and hospital during an all-night citizens’ protest. .

The police decision to take down the 9-foot-high barricades between Lalbazar and the demonstrating junior doctors, who carried the replica of a human spine to underline the importance of doing what is right in their overnight street portest, came right after the Bengal Assembly passed the state’s new and stringent anti-rape bill.

The meeting between the commissioner and the doctors lasted for an hour. The doctors submitted a deputation to the police, asking for Goyal’s resignation.

The doctors claimed Goyal was non-committal and that the meeting wasn’t satisfactory, but the police chief is said to have admitted that the cops failed during the rampage at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 14.

The junior doctors have lifted the sit-in demonstration, but said their protest to demand justice will continue.

“We want to know what is the progress of this case, how CBI is handling the case and how far we have to go for justice for RG Kar,” Anubhab Saha, an intern of RG Kar Medical College & Hospital who was not among those who met the police commissioner, told The Telegraph Online. “If our basic demands are not fulfilled we will continue the protest.”

The Telegraph Online Sources

The West Bengal Junior Doctors Front, which is spearheading the protests, has called on citizens to join them in a peaceful demonstration on Wednesday (September 4).

The doctors’ organisation urged people to come out on streets with lights and form a human chain to demand justice for the young doctor brutalised and killed in RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

This demonstration will take place from 9 to 10 pm on Wednesday.

“We are waiting for the Supreme Court’s hearing on September 5. I would like to point out that this fight is not only of the medical fraternity alone but of everyone’s and that’s why this call is taken,” said Dr Anudrita Baral, a housestaff at RG Kar Medical College & Hospital.

She said one need not get out on the streets to join their protest.

“We request everyone to switch off their lights and sit with diyas and candles in their balcony to stand in solidarity of our cause,” she said.

All the protesters at the demonstration site that The Telegraph Online spoke with outlined three main objectives. The protests, they said, will continue till justice is served, the motive behind the crime is revealed and commissioner Goyal has to resign for what they called his “incompetence” in handling the late-night violence at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

The protesting doctors near Lalbazar applauded the arrest of Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of RG Kar, but made it clear the fight isn’t over.