In what is being viewed as a part of the Mamata Banerjee Government’s “vendetta politics”, Dr Subarna Goswami a senior specialist doctor who had taken a frontal role in the last year’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital movement has been transferred to an allegedly lesser position in far off Darjeeling prompting the association of Bengal health services doctors and joint platform of doctors associations to threaten a renewed agitation “if Dr Goswami’s transfer order is not withdrawn and victimisation of doctors is not stopped.”
Dr Goswami, who has been posted as the Deputy CMOH-II, East Bardhaman district has been transferred as the Superintendent, Darjeeling TB Hospital, some 600 km north of Kolkata. The order would be implemented with immediate effect, according to a notification published by the State Health Department of which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is the minister in charge. “Dr Goswami who has been fighting for justice for the victim doctor of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital has now been transferred to Darjeeling … this is clearly a vendetta and proves amply the mindset of the State Government,” said another senior Dr Utpal Chatterjee adding, “if the order is not withdrawn forthwith the doctors fraternity will soon launch a bigger movement.”
Another senior doctor recounted how Dr Goswami had been transferred on eight occasions in a span of past a few years “just for raising his voice against corruption threat culture in various Government hospitals … he had been at the forefront of the RG Kar movement … the Government tried to purchase of threaten him into silence but he would not cow down … and so now he has been transferred out to Darjeeling … a letter has been sent to the Principal Secretary Health to withdraw his transfer … if it is not done immediately then the doctors’ fraternity will start a more intense agitation,” said another senior doctor.
Senior TMC leader Kunal Ghosh however justified the transfer saying it was a routine transfer. “When you are in a government job and a transferable service … you should be prepared for such routine transfers … the people should not see anything bad in such transfers,” he said. The incident relates to the State wide doctors’ agitation after a postgraduate lady doctor was on August 9 last year found brutally raped and murdered inside the Chest Medicine Department of RGKMCH where she had been working.
It was Dr Goswami who had for the first time revealed the contents of postmortem reports that suggested gangrape on the deceased medic.
The RG Kar case recently took a new turn with the Supreme Court allowing the case to be heard and the investigation done by the Central Bureau of Investigation to be monitored by the Calcutta High Court.
The Apex Court order came after the victim’s parents approached it aggrieved by an order of the trial court that awarded life imprisonment to the main accused Sanjoy Roy a civic volunteer. The parents of the victim contended that there were other persons too involved in the case and the Government was shielding them.
