Doctors strike across India to protest rape and murder of trainee medic

New Delhi CNN —

Thousands of doctors have gone on strike across India to demand better protection for health workers after a trainee medic was raped and murdered in eastern West Bengal state.

The resident doctor’s body was found last Friday with multiple injuries and signs of sexual assault in a seminar hall at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in the city of Kolkata, local police said. One suspect has been arrested.

CNN has reached out to Kolkata police for comment.

On Monday, medical associations in multiple states urged doctors at government hospitals to stop providing all elective services indefinitely as they called for the case to be fast-tracked through the courts and for the establishment of a protective committee for health workers.

“Around 300,000 doctors across the country have joined the protest and tomorrow we expect more to join,” said Dr. Sarvesh Pandey, general secretary of the Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA).

Images showed doctors in Kolkata and the capital Delhi holding signs reading: “Save our doctors, save our future.” In the southern city of Hyderabad, doctors held a candlelight vigil.

Many of the doctors also highlighted incidents of violence toward health workers and threats of physical abuse by angry patients or their family members.

A survey in 2015 by the Indian Medical Association found 75% of doctors in India had faced some form of violence, local media reported at the time.

“The murder of this young lady doctor is not the first, neither it would be the last if corrective measures are not taken,” the association said in a letter to the health minister, posted on X on Tuesday, as it called for an enquiry into doctors’ working conditions and an impartial