Thousands of Indian junior doctors have refused to end protests over the rape and murder of a fellow medic, disrupting hospital services nearly a week after they launched a nationwide action demanding a safer workplace and swift criminal probe.
Doctors across the country have held protests and declined to see non-emergency patients following the Aug. 9 killing of the 31-year-old medic, who police say was raped and murdered at a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata where she was a trainee.
The murdered doctor was found in the teaching hospital’s seminar hall, suggesting she had gone there for a break during a 36-hour-long shift. An autopsy confirmed sexual assault and, in a petition to the Kolkata High Court, her parents said they suspected their daughter was gang raped.
Doctors’ associations from government-run hospitals in many cities across India continued strikes on Monday that cut non-essential services.
In a rare case of unity, fans from Kolkata’s usual rivals the East Bengal club marched alongside them in a midnight rally that lasted into the early hours of Monday. “We are with the doctors,” the fans chanted in unison, shrugging off torrential monsoon rains and police seeking to break up the rally. “We want justice.”
Hearing set for Tuesday
Many of the protests in multiple cities have been led by doctors and other healthcare workers but have also been joined by tens of thousands of ordinary Indians demanding action.
Doctors from the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, where the murder occurred, rallied outside the building on Monday.
With non-essential medical procedures closed, some of the striking doctors in the capital New Delhi offered to see patients for free outside India’s health ministry.
One man, who worked at the hospital helping people navigate busy queues, has been detained. India’s Supreme Court has also taken up the case, overseeing the process in Kolkata’s High Court, with a hearing set for Tuesday.
Hundreds of lawyers, mostly women, joined the protests in Kolkata, marching in legal black gowns. “No mercy to rapists,” one banner read.
Doctors have also demanded the implementation of the Central Protection Act, a bill to protect healthcare workers from violence.
The gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus. It has sparked widespread outrage in a country where sexual violence against women is endemic.
Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India an average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022 in the country of 1.4 billion people.
Indian media reported on Monday that five people had been arrested, accused of raping a child at a bus station in northern Uttarakhand state.
