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(Al Jazeera) Hundreds of thousands of Indian medical workers and their supporters have launched a nationwide strike to protest the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at a government hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata last week.
Many of Saturday’s protests were led by doctors and other health care workers, joined by tens of thousands of Indians demanding action.
Hospitals and clinics across India refused to admit patients except for emergencies on Saturday, with medical staff starting a 24-hour work stoppage at 6 a.m. (00:30 GMT). Medical college faculty were forced to treat emergencies.
Protesters gathered in Kolkata chanting “We want justice”, calling for better working conditions and treatment not only for medical staff but also for women in general.
One handwritten sign read: “Hands that heal should not bleed.”
The blood-soaked body of the 31-year-old doctor was found at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9, triggering strong protests in several cities across the country.
“We don’t feel safe,” Antara Das, a medical student taking part in the protest in Kolkata, told Al Jazeera. “If this happened in the hospital which is our second home, where can we be safe now?”
The doctor was found in a seminar room at the teaching hospital where she was working a 36-hour shift. An autopsy confirmed she had been sexually assaulted.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest group of medical professionals with 400,000 members, condemned the “barbaric crime and lack of safe spaces for women”, adding in a statement that the medical community and the country as a whole were “victims”.
Hospitals and clinics in Lucknow in northern Uttar Pradesh, Ahmedabad in western Gujarat, Guwahati in northeastern Assam, Chennai in southern Tamil Nadu and other cities also joined the strike.
“We just want to be safe while performing our duties,” said Sapna Rani, a 27-year-old female doctor in the capital New Delhi who is taking part in the strike.
Ram Manohar Lohia Public Hospital is usually one of the busiest hospitals in New Delhi, and Rani said the hospital’s “doctor-to-patient” ratio is abysmal, with shifts often lasting 36 hours.
“After that, there was no proper place to rest,” she told AFP, describing how doctors rested “on wheelchairs and stretchers”.
Fight for justice
Rakhi Sanyal, a Kolkata doctor and professor at the West Bengal University of Health Sciences, condemned the “brutal murder” of the doctor and called for “justice” in the killing.
“The government has a responsibility to keep us safe. This should not happen,” she told Al Jazeera.
The doctors demanded implementation of the Central Protection Act to provide legal protection for medical staff from violence.
They also called for tougher laws, including making any attack on medical staff on duty a crime without bail.
Akanksha Tyagi, a 27-year-old gynecologist at a state hospital in New Delhi, said it was “deplorable” that it took “a doctor’s life to be taken” for people to pay attention.
A man is in custody in connection with the crime, which is now under investigation by federal investigators as state officials are accused of mishandling the investigation.
Many crimes against women in India go unreported due to the stigma around sexual violence and a lack of trust in the police.
According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), more than 31,000 rapes were reported in India in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.
At a rally held by doctors in the capital, one poster read: “Enough.”
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