Hospitals are closed for 24 hours as protests grow demanding protection for health workers and condemning violence.
Hundreds of thousands of Indian health workers and their supporters have launched a nationwide strike to protest the rape and murder of a junior doctor last week at a government hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.
Many of Saturday's protests were led by doctors and other health workers, who were also joined by tens of thousands of other Indians demanding action.
Hospitals and clinics across India turned away patients on Saturday, except in emergency cases, as medical professionals began a 24-hour lockdown at 6 a.m. (00:30 GMT). Professors at medical colleges had to rush to emergency rooms.
“We want justice,” shouted the protesters, as they gathered in Kolkata to demand better working conditions and treatment not only for health workers, but also for women in general.
“Healing hands shouldn’t bleed,” read one handwritten sign.
The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor's bloodied body on August 9 at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital sparked angry protests in several cities across the country.
“We don’t feel safe,” Antara Das, a medical student who joined the protest in Kolkata, told Al Jazeera. “If this had happened inside a hospital that is our second home, where would we be safe now?”
The murdered doctor was found in the seminar room of the university hospital where she worked a 36-hour shift. The autopsy confirmed the sexual assault.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country's largest doctors' group with 400,000 members, condemned the “crime on a barbaric scale and the lack of safe spaces for women”, adding in a statement that both the medical fraternity and the country were “victims”.
Hospitals and clinics in Lucknow in northern Uttar Pradesh, Ahmedabad in western Gujarat, Guwahati in northeastern Assam and Chennai in southern Tamil Nadu, as well as other cities, joined the strike.
Fight for justice
Rakhi Sanyal, a Kolkata-based physician and professor at West Bengal University of Health Sciences, denounced the “brutal murder” of the doctor and called for “justice” for the killing.
“It is the duty of the administration to ensure our safety,” he told Al Jazeera. “This should not have happened.”
Doctors are demanding the implementation of the Central Protection Act, a legislation to protect healthcare workers from violence.
They are also calling for stricter laws, including making any attack on doctors on duty a non-bailable offence.
A man has been arrested in connection with the crime, which is now being investigated by federal investigators after state government officials were accused of mishandling the investigation.
Many cases of crimes against women go unreported in India due to the stigma surrounding sexual violence and lack of trust in the police.
In 2022, the latest year for which data is available, more than 31,000 rapes were reported in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
At a doctors' protest in the capital, New Delhi, one sign read: “Enough is enough.”
