Nationwide strike by Indian doctors over Kolkata medic’s rape, murder

Hospitals hit by 24-hour shutdown as protests demanding protection for health workers and condemning violence swell.

Hundreds of thousands of Indian health workers and their supporters have launched a nationwide strike to protest against the rape and murder of a trainee doctor last week at a government hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Many of the protests on Saturday were led by doctors and other healthcare workers, who were also joined by tens of thousands of other Indians demanding action.

Hospitals and clinics across India turned away patients, except for emergency cases, on Saturday as medical professionals started a 24-hour shutdown at 6am (00:30 GMT). Faculty from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergencies.

“We want justice,” the protesters shouted, as they gathered in Kolkata to call for better working conditions and treatment not only for health workers, but also for women in general.

“Hands that heal shouldn’t bleed,” one handwritten sign read.

The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied body on August 9 at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital led to furious protests in several cities across the country.

“We don’t feel safe,” Antara Das, a medical student who joined the protest in Kolkata, told Al Jazeera. “If this happened inside a hospital that is second home to us, where are we safe now?”

The murdered doctor was found in the seminar hall of the teaching hospital where she was working a 36-hour shift. An autopsy confirmed sexual assault.

The Indian Medical Association, (IMA), the country’s largest grouping of medics with 400,000 members, condemned the “crime of barbaric scale and the lack of safe spaces for women”, adding in a statement that both the medical