Additional Doctors’ demonstration against alleged rape and murder targets Indian hospitals

Following the statewide expansion of a physicians’ protest over the suspected rape and murder of a 31-year-old doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata, hospital services were interrupted in other Indian cities on Tuesday, according to authorities and the media.

Images from television showed thousands of physicians protesting the event at a government-run hospital on Monday. They demanded improved security measures and justice for the victim, which shut down West Bengal state’s health facilities.

More than 8,000 government physicians in the western state of Maharashtra, which is home to Mumbai, the nation’s financial center, joined the protest on Tuesday, causing it to spread across the country and stop work in all hospital departments save emergency services, according to media reports.

Images obtained by Reuters Television showed junior doctors in white coats in New Delhi, the nation’s capital, sitting in protest outside a huge government hospital and holding banners that said, “Doctors are not punching bags,” demanding an inquiry.

Similar demonstrations disrupted hospital services in other cities, including Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state, and Goa, a popular tourist destination in western India, leaving thousands of patients stranded, according to media reports.

The largest medical association in the nation, the Indian Medical Association, wrote to Health Minister J P Nadda, stating that “pedestrian working conditions, inhuman workloads, and violence in the workplace are the reality.”

A request for comment was not immediately answered by a spokesman for the health ministry.

Even after the principal of the medical college where the doctor’s murder occurred resigned and a police volunteer in Kolkata was arrested over the weekend, doctors still believe their working environment is hazardous.

Reporters were informed by City Police Chief Vineet Kumar Goyal that a case had been filed against the suspect in accordance with rape and murder statutes.

Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, informed reporters that she had given state police till Sunday to finish their probe, failing which she will turn it over to federal officials.

According to state official N S Nigam, who spoke with Reuters on behalf of the government, emergency services were not provided on Tuesday in nearly all of the government-run medical college hospitals in Kolkata. The administration was also evaluating the effect on health services.

In addition to being overworked and underpaid, doctors in India’s packed and sometimes filthy government hospitals occasionally become the target of violent attacks from people enraged by the inadequate medical care they perceive.