The nationwide protest started after 16 August when cm Mamata Banerjee joined protestors really demanding death penalty for being accused in of a rape-murder of a doctor of a medical collage R.G. Kar Medical College
The Calcutta High Court on August 16 flagged the lack of preventive measures to curb the vandalism which occurred at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on the night of August 14. “If 7000 people are to gather, it hard to believe the State police did not know. So many people can’t come walking. This is an absolute failure of State machinery,” said the Bench.
A 31-year-old doctor was raped and murdered last week in a seminar room at RG Kar hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal, when she went to rest at night during a long shift. A man who worked informally at the hospital has been arrested and charged with the crime.
All hospital services in India except for emergency care will shut down on Saturday as doctors escalate their protest over the rape and murder of a colleague by calling for a nationwide strike.
The Central government said heads of health institutions will have to file an FIR within six hours in case of an incident of violence against a healthcare worker on duty.
The Indian Medical Association has called for a 24-hour nationwide withdrawal of non-emergency and OPD services on August 17. The organisation also demanded justice for the victim and a central law to protect healthcare workers. Following the call, more medics from public as well as private health facilities joined protests across the country.
The sense of outrage among women in India about the Kolkata murder has been compounded by the insensitive response of prominent people, suggesting little has changed since the 2012 gang-rape of a student in a moving bus in Delhi that shook the country.
The RG Kar medical college principal, Dr Sandip Ghosh, far from expressing sorrow over the doctor’s death, asked why she had been resting in the seminar room alone at night. After resigning, he was appointed to a post in another medical college.
