Under immense pressure post RG Kar Medical College rape and murder case and subsequent attacks on doctors in a number of medical colleges the Mamata Banerjee Government has formed a high powered committee to conduct “security audit” in the State-run medical colleges and hospitals. The seven-member team is led by former State Director General of Police Surajit Karpurakayastha.

Purakayastha will lead a team comprising senior officials like Col Nevendera Paul Singh, Joint Commissioner of Kolkata Police; Joy Biswas, DIG of West Bengal Police; Pushpa, Kolkata Police Deputy Commissioner; Tapas Maity, Superintending Engineer of the Health Circle in the Public Works Department; Soumya Bhattacharya, Additional Secretary to the Home and Hill Affairs Department; and Khalid Qaisar, Joint Secretary of the Health and Family Welfare Department.

The high-powered team is commissioned against the backdrop of an unprecedented groundswell of public outrage against an alleged “all pervading threat culture” — in most Government departments including Health — throughout the State the Bengal.

The Committee is tasked with evaluation of security measures in the medical colleges and hospitals so as to find out ways to improve the security set up so that the doctors can work in a safe environment and public is benefited by the health facilities provided by the Government, members of the team said adding the report will have to be submitted within two months.

“We have taken up an difficult task … we will hold discussions with all the stakeholders including the doctors, members of public, and the administration so as to get to the bottom of it … and then a report will be submitted to the Government,” Purakayastha a former security advisor to the Chief Minister said. District level audit committees will also be framed to take stock of the security system in respective areas, sources said.

“The shameful incident in RG Kar Hospital was the outcome of this threat culture which pervades in all Departments and is the major propeller of the Tolabaji (extortion) industry which is the main source of the political leadership’s ill-gotten money to fund its elections and all kind of illegal activities,” said BN Chakrabarty a renowned political analyst.

“Mamata Banerjee’s Government has introduced this culture in Bengal wherein a parallel government runs with the help of the political power, muscle power and police power … under the practices like senior medical professors are beaten up … students close to the ruling party indulge in mass cheating in examinations … those who protest are either transferred, beaten up or framed in false cases,” said Dr Subarna Goswami.

The grapevine has it that the victim of RGKMCH was not an isolated prey and that her brutal rape and murder was a part of a well-thought out plan not only to eliminate her but to warn others who chose the path of protest.

“She had come to know about so many things in course of duty … she had even raised the issue of spurious and below quality drugs being provided to the patients … and issue that she raised with the then Principal Sandip Ghosh who warned her of grave consequences … when she threatened to make things public she was silenced forever,” that is how a junior doctor of the hospital said adding “this ill-gotten money goes to the top most echelon of the system … the CBI has been told everything … now our movement is also against the CBI which is fumbling after having come to know about something … which is afraid of exposing people who are very high and mighty.”

Meanwhile, the protests continued with thousands of people including those from the civil society on Wednesday joining a grand rally called by the doctors in Kolkata.

The rally was called to herald the homecoming of the “Mother Durga who will definitely demolish the demons that are threatening the common man,” doctors said.

Elsewhere a symbolic black marble statue of the victim doctor was on Wednesday installed outside the RGKMCH, “to make each and every citizen of Bengal remember the cause we are fighting for … the cause of her justice and the cause of ending threat culture in Bengal.”