After the rape and murder of a doctor, Indian doctors staged a 24-hour national strike

The Indian Medical Association, India’s largest association of modern medical doctors, called for it delay of non-emergency medical services for 24 hours across the country after a female trainee doctor was raped and killed last week in a hospital.

The association, which has around 350,000 members, said the “national withdrawal of services by modern medicine doctors” will begin at 6am local time on Saturday and end at 6am.

“All essential services will be maintained,” the group wrote in a statement. “Routine OPDs will not function and elective surgeries will not be performed.”

Protests have broken out in India this week, with hundreds of thousands of medical professionals and activists taking to the streets to demand better protection for health workers after an incident that took place in the eastern city of Kolkata, the capital of India’s West Bengal state.

The IMA said the police and authorities had handled the murder and rape cases “reasonably.”

Reuters reported that the 31-year-old victim died at the medical college where he worked, and was found dead last Friday.

The victim was found bleeding from the eyes and mouth, and had injuries to his leg, stomach, ankle, right hand and fingers, the outlet reported. The police said she had been raped and police volunteers later arrested her for the crime.

Earlier this week, some government hospitals in the world’s most populous country suspended non-emergency services to protest the incident.

On Thursday, India’s Independence Day, thousands of women in West Bengal also held a march to demand justice for the victims, local media reported.

There will be more than 31,500 rape cases reported in India in 2022. Although this is a slight decrease from the previous year, it is still higher than from 2010 to 2013, when the reported cases were around 22,000 to 24,000. Data past 2022 is not yet publicly available.