NEW DELHI: Doctors across India went on hunger strike on Wednesday in solidarity with their colleagues in West Bengal who have been demanding justice and safer working conditions after the gruesome murder of a female medic in Kolkata.
Thousands of young medics have been taking to the streets after a 31-year-old trainee doctor was raped and murdered on Aug. 9 at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in West Bengal’s capital, where she worked.
While the protests were concentrated in Kolkata, where junior doctors have been on strike demanding justice for the victim and better safety measures in hospitals, other medics across India have been regularly holding solidarity demonstrations with them.
In late September, doctors agreed to return to work to help with emergency services amid floods, and after the West Bengal government agreed to some of their demands, including sacking the Kolkata police chief and two top Health Ministry officials.
But the demands for accountability for the murder, removal of the state’s health secretary, and increased police protection in hospitals have not been addressed, and the junior doctors resumed their protest on Monday. As seven of the protesters have been on indefinite hunger strike, the Federation of All India Medical Association symbolically joined them.
“The hunger strike is in solidarity and support of the junior doctors of West Bengal and their demands,” said Dr. Rohan Krishnan, chairman of the organization that represents over 100,000 resident doctors across the country.
“This hunger strike is for a day. At least one representative from each resident doctors’ association is on strike across India. I feel at the minimum it would be 1,000 doctors on strike.”
Krishnan told Arab News that the incidence of violence against doctors has been increasing in India and “what has happened in Bengal requires immediate measures and actions,” which until now have not been undertaken.
The federation sent a 10-member delegation to Kolkata to join the protesting junior doctors.
“We are here for the symbolic protest with the junior doctors, and we are having multiple meetings,” Dr. Suvrankar Datta, FAIMA president who is leading the delegation, told Arab News.
“The state government is ignoring the rational and genuine demands of the doctors who are on indefinite hunger strike. We have to ensure that the state government shows some kind of intent to come to the table at least. What the doctors are demanding can be done in a single day. The demands are all very just and very genuine.”
The probe into the murder has been moved from Kolkata Police to India’s federal Central Bureau of Investigation, which announced on Monday it had charged with rape and murder a suspect who was arrested soon after the incident.
The CBI charges came on the basis of interviews, CCTV footage, and autopsy, which revealed the doctor had 25 internal and external injuries as a result of the attack and had died by strangulation.
The brutality of the rape and murder sent shockwaves across India, which were further compounded by reports that senior hospital staff and local police had tried to cover up the incident.
“Our demand has been, first, justice to the victim and, second, to ensure that such an incident does not take place (again),” said Dr. Aqeeb Ashraf, member of the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front.
“Our movement is basically based on these two demands. We have met the chief minister many times and still no solution is coming out … Many people are joining our movement. Doctors are putting their lives at stake to save the medical system in Bengal.”
On Tuesday, 50 senior doctors from RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, where the murder took place, resigned in support of their striking colleagues.
“Our seniors are giving mass resignations to stand by us to address the government, so that they come and listen to us,” Dr. Paramita Thander, junior doctor at the RG Kar Medical College, told Arab News.
“If they don’t listen and (if) anything happens to the people on hunger strike, then we will go for escalation.”
