A section of doctors on Saturday said they would scale up protests in the coming days against the CBI’s inability to submit a chargesheet against former RG Kar Medical College and Hospital principal Sandip Ghosh and former Tala police station officer-in-charge Abhijit Mandal for the rape and murder of a 31-year-old junior doctor at the hospital.

Many doctors Metro spoke to said they were not immediately thinking about another cease-work but would organise regular street protests to step up pressure on the central agency.

About 250 junior doctors, nurses and common people marched from Salt Lake’s Karunamoyee to the Central Government Office Complex that houses the CBI office on Saturday afternoon.

Many of the familiar faces of the junior doctors’ protests that was at its peak between August and October were present in Saturday’s rally.

An eight-member delegation of doctors also met CBI officers after the march.

While the junior doctors organised the rally, a section of senior doctors held a protest meeting at Rani Rashmoni Avenue in Esplanade.

Both the protests were against Ghosh and Mandal getting bail on Friday as the CBI could not chargesheet them within 90 days of their arrest.

“We will scale up our protests in the coming days. We met a CBI officer who told us that bail is not equal to acquittal. The officer said that the CBI could file a supplementary chargesheet later. They did not file the chargesheet now because the investigation is still underway and the CBI is collecting more evidence,” said Debashis Halder, a junior doctor at Medical College Kolkata and one of the faces of the protest.

“They told us not to get disappointed. We did not go there with the expectation that they will reveal something, but we went to the CBI office to let them know that they should not do anything that lowers people’s impression about the CBI,” said Halder, who was in the eight-member team that went to the CGO Complex.

“There is an impression among people that because of the involvement of powerful people, a setting (tacit understanding) has been reached,” he said.

Saturday’s rally started at 3.45pm and reached the CGO Complex at 4.50pm. The eight-member delegation went into the CBI office at 5pm and came out about 25 minutes later.

Anustup Mukhopadhyay, a post-doctoral trainee at SSKM Hospital, said the junior doctors were planning to scale up their protests.

“We are trying to plan our movement in a bigger way. We have understood that things won’t come easily,” said Mukhopadhyay, one of the junior doctors who started a hunger strike in October. Mukhopadhyay did not go inside the CBI office.

The parents of the 31-year-old trainee doctor who was found raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9 were present in Saturday’s rally.

“The CBI took advantage of the fact that the intensity of the protests died down. We have to be on the streets. We will join all protests henceforth,” said the father.

At Esplanade, the Abhaya Mancha, which includes senior doctors and civil society members, burnt effigies of the Prime Minister, Bengal’s chief minister and the CBI director, said Tamonas Chaudhuri of the joint platform of doctors, an umbrella organisation of several senior doctors’ associations.

“We will scale up our
protests. We are discussing
the course of action,” said Chaudhuri.