KOLKATA: Some Indian junior doctors remained off the job on Sunday as they demanded swift justice for a colleague who was raped and murdered, despite the end of a strike called by a big doctors’ association, while some other people held street protests.

Doctors across the country have held protests, candlelight marches and refused to see non-emergency patients in the past week after the killing of the 31-year-old postgraduate student of chest medicine in the early hours of Aug 9 in the eastern city of Kolkata.

The Indian Medical Association, whose 24-hour strike ended at 6am on Sunday, told Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a letter that, as 60pc of India’s doctors are women, he needed to intervene to ensure hospital staff were protected by security protocols akin to those at airports.

In solidarity with the doctors, thousands of people marched in the streets of Kolkata on Sunday evening chanting “we want justice”, as authorities in West Bengal state struggle to contain demonstrations against the horrific crime. Women activists say the incident at the British colonial-era R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital has highlighted how women in India continue to suffer despite tougher laws following the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2024