Protesting doctors return to duty after long strike over rape-murder of Kolkata medic

Medics march along a street during a protest condemning the rape and murder of a trainee medic at a government-run hospital, in Kolkata, India, August 28, 2024. (REUTERS/File)

• West Bengal government dismisses the city’s police chief and top state health ministry officials
• Investigators arrested ex-college principal, police officer on charges of tampering with evidence

NEW DELHI: Protesting junior doctors in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal returned to duty on Saturday to provide emergency services to flood victims, as they partially withdrew from a month-long strike over the rape and murder of a female colleague in Kolkata.
The 31-year-old trainee doctor was brutally raped and murdered on Aug. 9 at a state-run hospital in West Bengal’s capital, where she worked.
The murder has triggered daily protests across India, especially in Kolkata, where thousands of young medics called for safer working conditions.
They continued their protest despite the Supreme Court ordering them last week to return to work, and said they would only follow if their demands for justice for the victim and better safety measures in hospitals were met.
“The strike is partially over. We have partially joined the duty, the emergency duty. We have only started, not the regular duties, because our demands have been partially fulfilled,” Dr. Anustup Mukherjee, member of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front, which represents some 7,000 physicians in the state, told Arab News.
Heeding to the doctors’ demands, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sacked on Tuesday Kolkata’s police chief and two top health ministry officials. But the demands for accountability for the murder and better security remain to be met.
“The demand for justice is still to be fulfilled, the demand for the eradication of the threat culture is yet to be fulfilled, even in the security and safety security issues, infrastructural issues are only partially fulfilled,” Mukherjee said, adding that the state’s administration told them it had ordered CCTVs, panic buttons and would arrange separate restrooms and bathrooms for on-duty doctors.
“We have got confirmation from the State Secretariat that our infrastructural demands for safety and security will be fulfilled ... But we are waiting.”
The doctors’ strike was lifted only at hospitals due to the ongoing floods in the state.
“We thought that a large number of people were suffering due to the flood, so we thought that ... a humanitarian decision should be taken,” Mukherjee said.
Dr. Ashfaqullah Naya, also a member of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front, told Arab News that the protest was not over.
“This partial withdrawal is also because there is a flood in some parts of the state. But the protests in medical colleges will continue. We are just doing essential services, not the regular services,” he said.
As the probe into the gruesome murder has been moved from Kolkata Police to India’s federal Central Bureau of Investigation, doctors were waiting for all the perpetrators to be caught.
One man has been charged with the murder and was arrested last month, but following an autopsy, doctors assessing the report suggested the victim might have been subject to gang rape.
“The culprits should be caught,” Naya said. “Some of the culprits are roaming free.”
Last week, the CBI arrested the former principal of the college where the murder took place and a local police officer on charges of mishandling and tampering with key evidence in the case, and misleading the investigation team.