The Bengal junior doctors who announced the withdrawal of the 17-day-long fast-unto-death late on Monday evening consequent to “partially successful talks” with “insensitive, arrogant and arbitrary” powers that be on Tuesday assured continuous agitation via different forms and means until they extracted justice for the Kolkata rape and murder victim and “restore health of the moribund health department.”
The doctors had been agitating post the brutal rape and murder inside the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital of a postgraduate lady doctor in the small hours of August 9 triggering a nation-wide, nay world-wide protest.
“Though we managed to get some assurance of fulfillment of some of our demands --- of which we will still have to wait for the directive to come from the Government --- the body language of the State Government was not positive,” Debashis Haldar one of the agitating doctors said adding “though the common people supported the doctors’ cause whole-heartedly the powers that be still were not ready to listen to us when we were raising issues on the corrupt officials and elements who have been under the CBI scanner and who have been perpetrating a threat and extortion syndicate in most of the Government medical colleges all these years.”
Doctor Aniket Mahato one of the protesting doctors who had heated verbal arguments with Banerjee on the issue of getting 59 junior doctors and students of RGKMCH expelled said, “Chief Minister was rebuking our Principal for taking action … she was scolding him for expelling the criminal elements who had perpetrated a regime of sexual exploitation, extortion and examination malpractices besides other kind of corrupt activities in connivance with the former Princial Sandip Ghosh.”
Seemingly the first person on camera match the Chief Minister word-by-word and decibel-by-decibel in the past 13 years of the Trinamool Congress rule he continued, Mahato said, “we would not take such insult of our teachers in front of us … when we told her that the expulsion was done by an empowered committee in consequence of deposition by victims and witnesses she refused to take our argument and warned all the Principals against taking such action in the future … she said in such cases the permission of the State Government would be necessary … does this mean that the Government has taken no lesson from the RG Kar rape and murder case which is fallout of the existing corrupt culture … does this mean that the Government is siding with the hardened criminals … Was this meeting held for setting the system right or sending a message to the criminals that they would once again get license to perpetrate crimes.”
Another doctor said, “when we were raising the issue which was being live-streamed the Chief Minister seemed more worried about her Government’s getting bad name in Delhi than she was concerned about the limping health infrastructure of the State marred by corruption and threat culture perpetrated by some students, doctors and officials who have been drinking from the cup of power.”
Meanwhile, the doctors who called off the Tuesday’s general medical strike sector too said that their movement would continue in days to come via different ways “which will be decided following future meetings.”
