Protesting junior doctors meet Kolkata Police Commissioner, demand his resignation

Junior doctors and medical students on Tuesday evening withdrew their demonstration from outside the Kolkata Police headquarters after a 22-member delegation representing the fraternity met Commissioner Vineet Kumar Goyal and handed him a memorandum seeking his resignation.

The junior doctors, who have been receiving a lot of support from the common people and the student community alike, have alleged shoddy probe by the police into the ghastly rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata last month. The Calcutta High Court later handed over the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

However, after the meeting the Commissioner, the delegation members said that their protest against the rape-murder at R.G Kar Medical College will continue until the probe reaches a logical conclusion.

“The Commissioner accepted that there had been some flaws on the part of the city police in the matter. On our demand for his resignation taking moral responsibility, the Commissioner said although he is satisfied with his work, if the higher authorities decide to remove him, he will accept the decision,” said a delegation member.

He also refuted the claims made by Trinamool Congress leader Kunal Ghosh earlier in the day that a group of junior doctors met him and discussed the existing situation.

“This is not true. No representative from the West Bengal Junior Doctor’s Forum met any political leader regarding the ongoing movement. We are deliberately keeping political parties and leaders at a distance from our movement on the issue,” he said.

At around 3 p.m. on Tuesday, after almost 24 hours since the junior doctors began a sit-in demonstration on being prevented by the cops from marching towards the city police headquarters in Lalbazar, the police succumbed to the pressure of the agitators and allowed them to proceed by removing the barricades put up on B.B Ganguly Street in Central Kolkata.

The agitators spent the entire night on B.B. Ganguly Street, located near the police headquarters in Lalbazar, singing songs and raising slogans against the police administration.

Several attempts by the top officials of the city police to convince the protesting doctors failed as they vowed to continue with their agitation for an indefinite period until their demands were met.

The agitators even placed red roses and the replica of a spine on the barricade to highlight their claims of police inaction in the R.G. Kar case.