Why junior doctors want Kolkata Police commissioner to resign

Carrying roses in their hand, junior doctors in Kolkata marched to the police headquarters on Monday, 2 September, demanding the resignation of the police commissioner Vineet Goyal.

The commissioner should have resigned, they maintained, taking moral responsibility for the failure of his force to stop a mob from vandalising the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital post-midnight on 14 August.

Police had justified the thin deployment around the college by pointing out that security was needed elsewhere in the city to ensure the safety of women who had taken out candle marches around midnight across the city, demanding justice for the junior doctor raped and killed inside the college on 9 August. The explanation was unconvincing, said the junior doctors at the time.

The junior doctors, who have been on a cease-work protest all through August, have also demanded action against everyone involved in the rape and murder.

They believe more than one person was involved. Other demands include measures to ensure safety of all healthcare givers and an end to the ‘reign of fear’ in the medical colleges in the state. The heavy police deployment around Lalbazar on Monday afternoon offended the doctors, who felt they were being treated as anti-social elements.

Asked by the city-based newspaper The Telegraph to explain why they are seeking the removal of the police commissioner, the junior doctors alleged that the city police, which had handed over the case to the CBI on 14 August following directions of the Calcutta High Court, had tampered with evidence at the crime scene, failed to unearth the motive and arrest all the culprits.

Their ire was directed against the CBI, too, because the central agency had not arrested anyone other than the civic volunteer who was arrested by the city police on 10 August. The CBI, however, arrested the former principal of the college, Sandeep Ghosh, on Monday, along with four others, for financial irregularities in the college.

“He should have owned moral responsibility and stepped down long ago. He did not. That is why we are here to remind him of his moral responsibility,” claimed one of the protesters. “The police commissioner has vested interests and is providing a smokescreen for the culprits to escape,” said another.

The probe was sabotaged, claimed a junior doctor in support of the demand for the police commissioner’s resignation. “Police played an active part in intimidating doctors and is playing an active role in the cover-up, they have lost their spine”, said others echoing the demand that the police commissioner must be removed.