Kolkata: A day after chief minister Mamata Banerjee removed two senior policemen and bureaucrats after fervent protests from junior doctors who are agitating for justice after the rape and murder of their trainee colleague at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, the Supreme Court hearing its suo motu case on the matter subjected the Bengal government to rounds of questions on women’s security at the hospital.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced shortly after midnight of September 16, and early on September 17, that by 4 pm today, Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal and Deputy Commissioner (North) Abhishek Gupta, will both be removed. The hospital is under Gupta’s jurisdiction. This had come after she sat in a five-hour meeting with junior doctors.
Banerjee also announced the removal of the director of medical education and the director of health services.
However, doctors have not withdrawn their protest, despite expressing satisfaction.
Banerjee cited floods, water-borne diseases, possible malaria and dengue cases to urge the doctors to return to work.
The junior doctors’ counsel Indira Jaisingh today requested the Supreme Court to record that no punitive action be taken for doctors who have not returned to work. For the Bengal government, Kapil Sibal stated that no such action will be taken, LiveLaw reported.
The apex court, meanwhile, turned down the West Bengal government’s request to stop live streaming of the court proceedings in this case.
It also noted that the Bengal government cannot say that women doctors cannot work at night and that it is the government’s duty to provide security. The Supreme Court also observed that the CBI’s report in the case is disturbing.
The court gave the Bengal government three days to take “remedial action” based on the protesting junior doctors’ demands which include a monitoring committee, in each hospital, a confidential grievance redressal system at each hospital, internal complaint committees in accordance with the Sexual Harassment of Women At Workplace (Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act 2013), and counselling centres at every hospital.
“Each of these aspects would merit serious consideration,” the court said, according to LiveLaw.
When Sibal sought a definite timeline for the doctors to return to work, Jaising said that a clear date cannot be given until the doctors hold a meeting with the general body of their association, the report noted.
