Doctors in India began a national strike on Saturday to protest the brutal rape and murder of a trainee medical officer at a hospital in the eastern state of West Bengal.
The doctor, a staff member at RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata, had settled down to sleep in the lecture hall after working nearly 20 hours of a 36-hour shift when he was attacked, his colleagues said. She was found dead last Friday and police have confirmed that the 31-year-old was raped and murdered.
A police volunteer working at the hospital has been arrested in connection with the crime, but the victim’s family said more people were involved.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest trade union representing doctors and medical workers, has called for a nationwide strike halting non-emergency medical services for 24 hours starting Saturday morning.
“In the wake of the brutal crime at RG Kar Medical College Kolkata and the hooliganism unleashed on protesting students, the IMA has announced a nationwide withdrawal of services by doctors of modern medicine from 6 am to 6 am on Sunday for 24 hours,” the medical organization said in a statement. , adding that “all essential services will be maintained”.
The IMA called on the public to support the “struggle for justice”, and called the killing a “crime of a barbaric scale because there is no safe place for women”.
“All junior doctors are on strike, so this means 90 percent of doctors are on strike,” an IMA representative in the southern state of Telangana told Reuters.
The work stoppage has affected patients across India, with around a million doctors out of work, the country’s largest in more than a decade.
“I have brought my grandmother who is sick. He didn’t see her today. I have to wait another day,” said Raghunath Sahu, who was in the patient queue at SCB Medical College and Hospital in the eastern city of Cuttack.
Attacking doctors and medical workers are demanding justice for victims and ensuring safety on medical campuses, including making any attack on medical personnel a non-bailable offence.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said it stood in solidarity with doctors in Kolkata and across India and called for urgent measures to improve the safety of women doctors in the workplace.
“The BMA is horrified by the rape and murder of a junior female doctor at the hospital where she worked in Kolkata, India… This should not be a risk any doctor can take in their workplace,” the BMA wrote. X.
Earlier this week hundreds of thousands of women marched to chants of “reclaim the night” in several cities in India.
National demonstrations by doctors and women’s groups were fueled by anger over the failure to pass tough laws to stem the tide of violence against women.
“The punishment should be the heaviest, it should be faster, it should be in the public memory,” said senior criminal lawyer Shobha Gupta, who represented Muslim women who were raped during religious riots in Gujarat in 2002.
“While we are still angry about the crime, the results should come out. Punishment to play a deterrent role, should be faster,” said Mrs. Gupta.
India’s federal Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which has taken over the investigation into the crime in Kolkata, has summoned several students from RG Kar College and also questioned the head of the hospital as it seeks to determine the circumstances that led to the doctor’s murder.
The country’s health ministry has promised to set up a committee on doctor safety, as it calls for striking medical workers to return to work.