RG Kar Hospital horror: Doctors offer OPD services outside health ministry

BJP calls West Bengal CM 'shameless' and demands her resignation

Several resident doctors’ associations (RDAs) continued their strike in major hospitals across India for the eighth consecutive day on Monday, citing unresolved safety concerns for healthcare professionals, amid protests over the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in Kolkata’s state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9.

All resident doctors from the RDA of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, marched and sat outside the Nirman Bhawan, which houses the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, to provide elective outpatient department (OPD) services.

“All resident doctors will be providing elective OPD services of around 36 specialties (including medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, ophthalmology, orthopaedics and others) to patients outside Nirman Bhawan,” an official statement from AIIMS RDA said.

These demonstrations come two days after the Indian Medical Association (IMA) held a 24-hour nationwide strike in protest against the RG Kar incident. The medical body also wrote to President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, listing out demands, including hospital security, a central protection Act for healthcare workers, and proper investigation of the rape-and-murder case.

The IMA’s nationwide strike, joined in by doctors from government and private hospitals, included complete withdrawal of routine OPD services and elective surgeries, while all essential and emergency services were maintained.

A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the rape-murder case on Tuesday, after taking suo motu cognisance on Sunday. The bench will be led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud.

Meanwhile, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee "shameless" and demanded her resignation, alleging that crucial evidence was destroyed at her behest to save the culprits.

It also slammed leaders of the Opposition INDIA bloc, including Congress' Rahul Gandhi, and called them "political vultures", alleging that they "generalised" the trainee doctor's rape and murder by expressing a general concern over such cases reported in different parts of the country, including those in BJP-ruled states.

"Mamata Banerjee has become Mamata, the destroyer. By her misdeeds, she destroyed the dignity of a woman, a doctor who was serving society. Mamata Banerjee is the destroyer of the rule of law and the Constitution," BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said at a press conference at the party headquarters here.

"And see the brazenness of shameless Mamata, the destroyer. She took out a march in Kolkata while the entire country was embarrassed by the gruesome incident of rape and murder… She should immediately resign (as CM)," Bhatia said.

Ex-principal quizzed for 4th day

Officers from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) questioned Sandip Ghosh, former principal of the RG Kar Medical College, for the fourth consecutive day on Monday in connection with their probe into the rape and murder, a report from Kolkata said.

Ghosh was asked to specify his role after getting the news of the death of the doctor, who he had contacted and why he made the parents wait for nearly three hours (to see the body).

The ex-principal was also questioned who had ordered the renovation of the rooms near the seminar hall (crime scene) in the emergency building of the hospital after the incident. The officers of the central agency are also checking his mobile phone call list details as well as his WhatsApp chat list.