West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a meeting with junior doctors delegation, at her Kalighat residence in Kolkata
PTI
Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday accepted the demand of the protesting junior doctors for the removal of Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal from the helm of the city’s law enforcement agency for his failure to ensure a fair probe in the rape and murder of a young doctor at a hospital here.
Banerjee also accepted the demand of the protesting doctors to remove two senior officials of the Department of Health and Family Welfare of the state government.
A delegation of junior doctors agitating since the rape and murder of one of their colleagues at a hospital run by the West Bengal government in Kolkata finally had a meeting with the state’s chief minister at her residence on Monday.
The Trinamool Congress government also accepted the demand for enhancing the security at the hospitals.
Banerjee said that Goyal would hand over the responsibility to the new police commissioner after 4 p.m. on Tuesday. She urged them to end their cease work stir and return to work soon in order to ensure healthcare services to the people of the state.
After several attempts to hold dialogues failed over the past few days, the meeting between the chief minister and the representatives of the protesting junior doctors took place a day before the Supreme Court is likely to hear a case it took up suo motu in the wake of the outrage over the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.
The meeting between the representatives of the protesting junior doctors and the chief minister went on for two hours. Chief Secretary Manoj Pant and other senior officials of the state government were also present during the meeting.
The earlier attempts for talks had failed because the state government had rejected the pre-conditions set by the protesting doctors, who first insisted on live streaming of their discussion with the chief minister and then asked for a recording of the meeting by a videographer hired by them.
The breakthrough came on Monday after the state government and the junior doctors agreed to have separate minutes of the meeting prepared for signing by the representatives of both sides. The delegation of junior doctors went to the chief minister’s residence with two stenographers to prepare the minutes of the meeting. The state government also had its officials record the minutes separately.
The agitating doctors started the meeting by reiterating their demands, which included punishment for all persons responsible for the rape and murder of the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9 as well as for destruction of evidence, strict action against the former principal of the institution Dr Sandip Ghosh and other officials for corruption and cover-up attempts after the incident, resignation of commissioner of Kolkata Police Vineet Goyal for failing to conduct a fair probe and of Health Secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam for failing to protect healthcare professionals as well as improved security for doctors, nurses and others and end of the culture of intimidation in public healthcare institutions.
Banerjee said that the investigation into the rape and murder of the doctor was being done by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the state government could do nothing to expedite it.
Though the Supreme Court had asked the junior doctors to end their cease work stir by 5 pm on September 10, they had not returned to work and rather launched a sit-in demonstration in front of the ‘Swasthya Bhavan’, the headquarters of the Department of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of West Bengal in Kolkata.
The state government had invited a delegation of the protesting junior doctors to the state secretariat on September 12 for talks with the chief minister. The doctors had reached the state secretariat but returned without meeting the chief minister as the government was not ready to allow live streaming of the meeting.
Banerjee, herself, on September 14 had turned up at the venue of the protests by the junior doctors and reiterated her appeal to them to return to work. The state government had later that day invited a delegation of the protesters to the residence of the chief minister for talks. But the stand-off had continued, and the doctors had again returned without talking to her as the state government had not allowed the videographer hired by them to record the meeting.
Seven lakh outdoor patients and seventy thousand indoor patients had been denied medical care due to the cease work stir by the junior doctors over the past five weeks, according to the state government. Over 7,000 surgeries had been deferred in the state government’s hospitals and 1,500 patients in catheterization laboratories had been left untreated. The state government had on September 9 informed the Supreme Court that 23 patients had died due to the lack of timely and adequate medical care during the cease-work agitation by the junior doctors.
With nearly 6000 junior doctors in over 20 government hospitals across the state not working, healthcare services across the state have been severely affected. The senior doctors, who had briefly joined the protest, returned to work later, but could hardly fill the void created by the continuing cease work stir by thousands of junior doctors. The protesting junior doctors, however, launched telemedicine services and free medical camps for patients.
The Kolkata Police had arrested Sanjay Roy, a civic volunteer (a contractual support employee of the law enforcement agency), for raping and murdering the junior doctor just a day after her body was found early on August 9. After the Calcutta High Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to take over the probe, the Kolkata Police handed over Roy to the central agency on August 14.
The High Court on August 23 also ordered the CBI to take over the probe from the Special Investigation Team, which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government had constituted in the wake of the allegations of financial misconduct against Dr Ghosh and his close associates. The Enforcement Directorate also launched an investigation into the allegations of corruption at the RGKMCH.
Dr Ghosh, who was removed from the office of the RGKMCH principal, is already behind bars as the CBI’s Anti-Corruption Bureau on September 2 arrested him in connection with the allegations of corruption and financial misconduct at the hospital-cum-medical-college in Kolkata during his tenure as principal. He was also arrested by the CBI in connection with the probe into the rape and murder of the young doctor.
The central agency also arrested Abhijit Mondal, who was the officer-in-charge of Tala Police Station that was first informed after the doctor was found raped and murdered in the RGKMCH. Mondal was arrested for allegedly delaying the lodging of the First Information Report, destruction of evidence, and misleading the investigation in the case.
Mondal was also suspended after the rape and murder of the doctor and the allegations of a cover-up attempt by the Kolkata Police and RGKMCH authorities triggered widespread outrage.