Some India doctors stay off job after strike over colleague’s rape, murder

Some Indian junior doctors remained off the job on Sunday, demanding swift justice for a colleague who was raped and murdered, despite the end of a 24-hour strike called by the country's biggest association of doctors.

Doctors across the country have held protests, candlelight marches and have refused to see non-emergency patients in the past week after the killing of the 31-year old postgraduate student of chest medicine around the early hours of Aug. 9 in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Women activists say the incident at the British-era R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital has highlighted how women in India continue to suffer despite tougher laws following the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012.

"My daughter is gone but millions of sons and daughters are now with me," the father of the victim, who cannot be identified under Indian law, told reporters late on Saturday, referring to the protesting doctors. "This has given me a lot of strength and I feel we will gain something out of it."

India introduced sweeping changes to the criminal justice system, including tougher sentences, after the 2012 attack, but campaigners say little has changed and not enough has been done to deter violence against women.

Doctors and medical students hold placards and candles during a protest in Ahmedabad, India, on Saturday. AP

The Indian Medical Association, whose strike ended at 6 a.m. (0030 GMT) on Sunday, told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that as 60% of India's doctors are women, he needed to intervene to ensure hospital staff were protected by security protocols akin to those at airports.

"All healthcare professionals deserve peaceful ambience, safety and security at workplace," it wrote in a letter to Modi.

But in Modi's home state of Gujarat, more than 6,000 trainee doctors in government hospitals continued to stay away from non-emergency medical services on Sunday for a third day although private institutes resumed regular operations.

"We have unanimously decided to continue our protest to press for our demands," said Dr. Dhaval Gameti, president of Junior Doctors' Association at B.J. Medical College in Ahmedabad.

"In the interest of patients, we are providing emergency medical services but not taking part in out-patient department or routine ward work."

Reuters