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20-08-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ KOLKATA: The murder and rape of a trainee doctor as she took a rest during a long shift in a Kolkata hospital has highlighted the vulnerability of medics left without proper protections and facilities, her colleagues and friends said on Thursday.
The 31-year-old, whose killing has triggered protests across India, had ordered some food with others nearly 20 hours into a 36-hour working day on Friday and then headed off for a short sleep, staff at the R G Kar Medical College told Reuters.
“She retired to the empty seminar room which was used by on-duty doctors to rest,” one co-worker said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
As news of her murder spread, doctors took to the streets alongside women’s groups and Bollywood stars, demanding enhanced safety measures for doctors on duty.
“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 on Tuesday.
The health ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the letter, not did West Bengal health authorities about working conditions for doctors.
“The attention of the authorities was drawn time and again to the lack of facilities, but there was no improvement,” a junior doctor at the hospital said, asking not to be named.
The case has drawn parallels to the notorious gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012 – a case that was the catalyst for sweeping changes in laws, including fast-track courts for sexual assault cases.
Hospital services were disrupted in several Indian cities on Tuesday 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, Reuters Television 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 media 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.
