Our Bureau
London
A group of Indian doctors and medical students in the UK have issued an open letter this weekend condemning the “brutal rape and murder” of a postgraduate trainee doctor at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. The letter demands justice for the victim and criticizes the “inaction” of the West Bengal government in responding to the incident.
The open letter follows a peaceful protest staged outside India House in London and similar gatherings in UK cities like Edinburgh and Leeds in solidarity with the doctors protesting in India. It states that “this incident is a symptom of the rising violence against women and the negligence of the state towards its citizens”.
“The absence of investment in public infrastructure and safety measures has a disproportionate impact on women, who are already marginalised by the patriarchal social conditions,” the letter notes. “Instead of supporting their empowerment by creating safe workplaces and efficient judicial mechanisms, government leaders, including Mamata Banerjee, have historically indulged in victim-blaming and misogynist responses.”
The letter adds that “the death of the female doctor at RG Kar Medical College is an indication of the urgent necessity to implement public safety measures and internal complaint mechanisms in all workplaces in the country”.
Dr Dipti Jain, an NHS geriatrician based in Brighton who trained in Kolkata, said she was “horrified and inundated with messages from the medical fraternity” since the incident. “We have worked in those spaces fearlessly just 30 years ago, when the shield of the white clinical apron was like a ‘Lakshman Rekha’ and everyone called us ‘Daktar Didi’. How did attitudes change so drastically that no space is deemed safe for kids and women now?” she asked.
Jain is coordinating the protest messages from Indian-origin colleagues around the world as Lead for the Pan UK South Asian Doctors and chair of the Medicos Women Charity.
Another UK-based doctor, Gauri Batra, said: “We were once that hard-working young doctor trying to establish ourselves and further ourselves. But not at the cost of what one young doctor had to pay on that grim night… our feelings have no bounds; we weep at what is happening and on the eve of the 78th year of independence of our young and dynamic country.”
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has also appealed to all its members across India to participate in a 24-hour nationwide strike until Sunday morning as part of the ongoing protests, which affected health services across India.
Further demonstrations are planned in the UK, with a peaceful protest by British Indian women doctors at Parliament Square in London scheduled for August 22.
