Doctors took to the streets across India on Wednesday to demand sweeping changes to healthcare worker protections, after a female student medic was raped and murdered last week at a government-run hospital.
The strike came as federal investigators arrived in the eastern city of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state where the incident happened, following demands from protestors for an inquiry.
According to state-owned All India Radio, federal forensic experts and medical officers were expected to visit the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, where authorities found the body of the 31-year-old resident doctor in a seminar hall on Friday.
Police said the woman’s body showed signs of sexual abuse as well as several injuries, and that one suspect has been arrested.
A wave of anger broke over Kolkata last week as doctors, who have long complained about working conditions in India’s dilapidated and overcrowded government hospitals, declared a strike, bringing elective procedures to a standstill.
In 2021, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) — one of India’s largest doctor groups — said that over 75% of the country’s doctors had faced some form of violence, most of it from patients’ caregivers.
The case also highlights India’s long struggle to tackle violence against women, despite some of the world’s most stringent laws.
Medical associations across the country joined the action, calling for a federal investigation and overhaul of security measures at hospitals. The protestors say that the laws that exist in some states are largely ineffective, necessitating a law at the federal level.
The Federation of Resident Doctors Association said in a statement posted on X that key demands have already been met, as it called off its strike following a meeting late Tuesday with Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda.
A committee to draft the law, which the federation referred to as the Central Healthcare Protection Act, will meet within two weeks according to the statement.
Still, thousands of other doctors continued their protests in solidarity, calling for the suspension of the Kolkata school’s principal and the swift implementation of the protection law.
“This heinous crime exposes the alarming lack of security in our hospital premises,” the Federation of All India Medical Association said in a letter posted Wednesday on X.
Videos from Kolkata showed doctors wearing white coats and stethoscopes chanting and raising banners reading “we want justice.”
Similar protests continued in other cities across India. Video from All India Radio showed hospital staff at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in the Indian capital of New Delhi chanting slogans and demanding the passing of the new law.
Doctors “are abused, trolled, sued and even beaten to death,” the IMA told health minister Nadda in an open letter Tuesday. “Inhuman workload and violence in workplace are the reality.”
“The murder of this young lady doctor is not the first,” it said, adding that “neither would it be the last if corrective measures are not taken,” the IMA added.
The National Medical Commission issued an advisory Tuesday urging medical schools to ramp up security measures, including video surveillance and the deployment of additional security staff.
India’s National Crime Records Bureau registered an average of 86 rape cases every day in 2022. Even so, many women still do not report sexual crimes due to the stigma of victimhood in India’s deeply patriarchal society.
In 2013, sentencing for rapists was doubled to 20 years after the fatal rape of a young woman in New Delhi. The law was also amended to criminalize acts such as stalking and voyeurism and allow for suspects to be tried as adults at the age of 16.
