Kolkata: After 42 days of agitation following the RG Kar Hospital incident, junior doctors of government hospitals have called off their cease work. The decision was announced on Friday evening, with the medics set to resume partial duties in state-run hospitals from Saturday.
The doctors ended their 42-day protest after a march from the state health department’s headquarters at Swasthya Bhawan to the CBI office in Salt Lake, covering a distance of approximately 4 km. The march concluded in a press conference held by the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front outside the CBI office.
Debashis Haldar, a functionary of the rally, said, "We are stopping our sit-in protest due to the flood situation. We will serve in flood-affected areas from tomorrow, but our protest is not over. We will continue this in all medical colleges and hospitals. We will see what happens at the next Supreme Court hearing. If we don't get justice, we will resume our protest."
While the junior doctors have agreed to partially resume duties, they clarified that they would not be working in the Outpatient Department (OPD). Instead, they will only attend to emergency and essential services from Saturday.
The protest began in response to the rape and murder of a young doctor at RG Kar Hospital, which had sparked outrage among the medical community. The junior doctors had been staging a sit-in outside the state health department’s office for over 10 days before calling off the cease work.
Meanwhile, Shyamal Santra, a professor and a former minister, expelled two students from the class for protesting over the RG Kar case. The incident took place on Friday at Sardamani Mahila Mahavidyapeeth of Bankura. He is the head of the department of geography and also a key functionary of ruling TMC in the locality. However, he claimed that anarchy was actually going on in the name of RG Kar protest, which was why he expelled 2 students from the class.
In the words of the protesting students, "We protested against the RG Kar case outside the college gate and had created graffiti on the road. For that yesterday Shyamal Santra sir threw us out of the class. We even asked him whether to protest is wrong. He threw us out of the class without giving any answer. I went to complain to the principal. He said, it is an internal matter of the department, settle among yourselves."
Read More
