Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
04-09-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ KOLKATA: India’s federal police said it had arrested the former principal of R.G. Kar Medical College in Kolkata for alleged graft, after an investigation in the case of the brutal rape and murder of a young female doctor on the premises.
Sandip Ghosh, who resigned as principal of the British colonial-era college days after the incident became public, was arrested on Monday on charges of financial irregularities, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said.
The CBI said it also arrested two vendors of hospital supplies and a close aide of Ghosh in connection with the case.
Reuters was not able to immediately reach Ghosh or his lawyer.
The rape and murder case triggered widespread protests by doctors demanding greater safety for women at the workplace and justice for the 31-year-old doctor, whose body was found over three weeks ago.
Although tougher laws were introduced after the 2012 gruesome gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi, activists say the incident in Kolkata has highlighted how women in India continue to suffer from sexual violence.
A police volunteer, designated to help police personnel and their families with hospital admissions when needed, was arrested last month and charged with the crime.
Earlier, hospital services were disrupted in several Indian cities after a doctors’ protest spread nationwide following the rape and murder of a trainee medic in the city of Kolkata, authorities and media said.
Thousands of doctors marched on Monday in Kolkata and the surrounding West Bengal state to denounce the killing at a government-run hospital, demanding justice for the victim and better security measures.
The 31-year-old doctor was found dead on Friday. Police said she had been raped and murdered and a police volunteer was subsequently arrested in connection with the crime.
Protests spread on Tuesday, with more than 8,000 government doctors in the western Maharashtra state, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, halting work in all hospital departments except emergency services, media said.
In the capital, New Delhi, junior doctors wearing white coats held posters that read, “Doctors are not punching bags,” as they sat in protest outside a large government hospital, media images showed.
Similar protests in cities such as Lucknow, capital of the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, and in the western tourist resort state of Goa hit some hospital services, media said.
“Pedestrian working conditions, inhuman workloads and violence in the workplace are the reality,” the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the biggest grouping of doctors in the country, told Health Minister J P Nadda in a letter released before they met him for talks on Tuesday.
IMA General Secretary Anil Kumar J Nayak told the ANI news agency that his group had urged Nadda to step up security at medical facilities.
The health ministry did not immediately comment.
A high court in Kolkata ordered that the criminal investigation be transferred to India’s federal police, the Central Bureau of Investigation, indicating that the authorities were treating the case as a national priority.
