Some young Indian doctors stayed off work on Sunday, demanding swift justice for a colleague who was raped and murdered, despite the end of a 24-hour strike called by the country's largest doctors' association.
Doctors across the country have held protests, candle-lit marches and refused to treat non-emergency patients over the past week following the murder of the 31-year-old thoracic medicine graduate student around the early hours of August 9 in the eastern city of Kolkata.
Women activists say the incident at the British-era RG Kar Medical College and Hospital has highlighted how women in India continue to suffer despite tougher laws following the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012.
“My daughter is gone, but millions of sons and daughters are with me,” the victim's father, who cannot be identified under Indian law, told reporters on Saturday evening, referring to the protesting doctors. “This has given me a lot of strength and I feel we are going to gain something from it.”
India introduced sweeping changes to the criminal justice system, including tougher sentences, after the 2012 attack, but activists say little has changed and not enough has been done to deter violence against women.
The Indian Medical Association, whose strike ended at 6 a.m. on Sunday, told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that since 60% of India's doctors are women, he needed to intervene to ensure hospital staff were protected by airport-like safety protocols.
“All healthcare professionals deserve a calm, safe and secure environment at the workplace,” he wrote in a letter to Modi.
But in Modi's home state of Gujarat, more than 6,000 junior doctors at government hospitals remained away from non-urgent medical services for a third day on Sunday, even as private institutes resumed regular operations.
“We have unanimously decided to continue our protest to press for our demands,” said Dr Dhaval Gameti, president of the Junior Doctors Association at BJ Medical College in Ahmedabad.
“For the benefit of patients, we provide emergency medical services, but we are not involved in the outpatient department or routine work on the wards.”
'It could stop emergency services'
The government has urged doctors to return to work to treat rising cases of dengue and malaria, while setting up a committee to suggest measures to improve the protection of health workers.
Most doctors have resumed their regular activities, IMA officials said, although Sunday is typically a holiday for non-emergency cases.
“Doctors are back to their routine,” said Dr. Madan Mohan Paliwal, director of the IMA in the most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. “The next step will be decided if the government does not take strict measures to protect doctors… and this time we could paralyze emergency services as well.”
But the All India Residents and Junior Doctors Joint Action Forum said on Saturday it would go ahead with a “nationwide stoppage of work” with a 72-hour deadline for authorities to conduct a thorough investigation and make arrests.
Dr Prabhas Ranjan Tripathy, additional medical superintendent at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the eastern city of Bhubaneswar, said junior doctors and interns had not resumed duty.
“The demonstrations are there today too,” he said. Reuters“There is a lot of pressure on others because the workforce is being reduced.”
RG Kar Hospital has been rocked by unrest and protests for over a week. Police have banned gatherings of five or more people in the vicinity of the hospital for a week from Sunday and deployed police in riot gear.
Blocking gatherings, demonstrations and processions was justified to prevent “disturbance of public peace and tranquility,” Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal said in an order.
Reuters Journalists did not see doctors at their usual protest site around the hospital gates on Sunday because it was raining in the area.
