The junior doctors protesting their colleague’s alleged rape and murder at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital expressed their reservations about the police probe and extended their cease-work to the emergency wards despite the assurance of a transparent investigation by the police commissioner.

By Sunday afternoon, the cease-work at emergency wards had spread to government hospitals across the city and in districts.

“Till now, junior doctors were working in the emergency wards. From today,
no junior doctor will be available there,” said a postgraduate trainee in the chest medicine department of RG Kar hospital.

The postgraduate trainee who was found dead in a seminar room of the hospital
early on Friday was associated with the chest medicine department.

“Our demands have not been met. It is not possible for one person to inflict this kind of torture on a woman. We still suspect more than one person was involved,” said another protesting doctor.

“We want the police to arrest the culprits with proper evidence and brief us or a committee that has been formed by the hospital to probe the doctor’s death. We are also demanding a judicial probe, something the government has yet to accept.”

A statement issued by the protesting doctors at RG Kar on Sunday said they would “continue our cease-work of emergency as well as non-emergency duties until all our demands are met”.

The demands are:

• Immediate judicial inquiry and arrest of the culprits with proper evidence
• Capital punishment forthe culprits
• The relevant evidence, including CCTV footage and post-mortem report, should be shared with representatives of the protesting doctors
• Written apology from and resignation of higher authorities (principal, vice-principal and head of chest medicine at RG Kar as well as the on-duty assistant commissioner of police at the RG Kar police outpost) within 12 hours
• Immediate announcement of adequate compensation for the victim’s family
• Regular written update on the investigation.

Several young doctors said the probe so far had gaping holes.

“The autopsy (of the deceased doctor) happened at RG Kar. There are serious allegations against the institution itself. In such a situation, the autopsy should have been at a neutral place for the sake of fairness,” said a member of the resident doctors’ association at RG Kar.

Another protester, also a postgraduate trainee, said: “The principal is the head of the institution. He has to take moral responsibility for the gruesome incident and go.”

Asked about the plight of patients if the emergency wards are non-functional, a junior doctor said: “We have been forced to do this. No one is listening to us. The young woman who was raped and murdered was one of us.”

The commissioner of Kolkata Police, Vineet Goyal, spent at least a couple of hours at RG Kar on Sunday evening, holding a series of meetings with the protesting students.

A junior doctor who attended the meetings told The Telegrpah that Goyal had agreed to share the CCTV footage and the post-mortem findings with a group of five protesting doctors.

“He said the group will be able to see the footage and the report. However, copies of the footage and the report would not be handed to them,” the doctor said.

The demonstration had only 30-odd students around 2pm. But as the day progressed, the group swelled. By 7.30pm, more than 100 people were part of it.

A sizable section of the protesters vented their ire against the RG Kar principal Sandip Ghosh.

“He wields a lot of clout. He would fail us in exams for taking part in protests for something as basic as hostel lights,” said a junior doctor.

Twice last year, Ghosh was transferred from RG Kar to Murshidabad Medical College. The first order was issued on May 31 but was revoked by the health department in 48 hours.

The second order, issued on September 11, was also revoked within a month. Ghosh did not answer calls from this newspaper on Sunday evening.

Late in the evening, representatives of resident doctors at several medical colleges held a meeting at the Medical College Kolkata.

“It was unanimously decided that junior doctors will not attend emergency duties till our demands are met. We will scale up our protests to a pan-India level, if needed,” a protesting doctor said after the meeting.

The demands matched those made by the protesters at RG Kar. A mass rally has been planned from College Square to RG Kar on Monday evening, the protesters
said.