Medic’s Killing Fuels Protests and Walkouts in India

After a long shift last Thursday, a junior doctor went to sleep in a seminar room at the Kolkata hospital where she worked. The next morning, her colleagues found her dead, her body showing signs of rape and extreme physical brutality.

The killing, at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, has stirred angry protests over entrenched misogyny and violence against women and led thousands of doctors to walk out of major public hospitals across India to demand a safer working environment.

Attacks on doctors in hospitals are common in India. Last month, doctors in New Delhi went on strike after an assault on a hospital by dozens of people, many of them relatives of a woman who died during surgery after giving birth.

In the days after the killing of the junior doctor, a 31-year-old physician trainee whose name may not be published under Indian law, intense anger boiled over into nationwide outrage. On Wednesday night, thousands of women protested on the streets of Kolkata, the largest city in West Bengal.

Outrage among doctors has also continued to build, with many government hospitals suspending all but emergency treatment as medical workers protest to demand better protection from such violence.

After protests by doctors, the head of R.G. Kar Medical College stepped down from his position, but hours later he was reassigned to another hospital by the state government. On Tuesday, a top court in Kolkata asked him to go on leave.