Arbitrarily transferred, say 3 doctors who led RG Kar Hospital protests | Latest News India

KOLKATA: Three junior doctors at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, who led an agitation after the August 9, 2024 rape and murder of a fellow post-graduate trainee, alleged on Tuesday that they have been arbitrarily transferred to district hospitals barely three months after their first postings.

The doctors – Debashis Haldar, Aniket Mahato and Asfaqullah Naiya – said they were transferred on Monday to hospitals in Malda, Purulia and North Dinajpur, respectively. The three senior resident trainees were given their first posting in February when Haldar was posted to Howrah, Mahato to Hooghly and Naiya to Kolkata.

“We are willing to work in any part of the state. We are not opposing the transfers but the arbitrary manner in which it was done. Haldar, for example, was posted at Howrah District Hospital in February after counselling,” Mahato told reporters at Sasthya Bhawan, the headquarters of the health department, at Salt Lake.

“I am compelled to see this as a vindictive action,” Haldar said.

The three doctors and their colleagues started a protest outside the office of principal health secretary NS Nigam who exited the building without talking to them.

“Anybody having a problem can inform the department in writing,” Nigam told reporters before leaving.

In February, some junior doctors were summoned by police in connection with an allegation of diversion of funds raised for the movement.

The cybercrime branch of the Bidhan Nagar police launched the probe following a complaint filed by Raja Ghosh, a Kolkata resident, last year, alleging that he did not receive any receipt for ₹5,000 donated for the cause. The suspects in this case are members of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front.

In January, the West Bengal Medical Council asked RG Kar Medical College whether Kinjal Nanda, another prominent face of the movement, had been skipping classes and duty.

HT reported on January 27 that the medical council sent a letter to the hospital asking whether Nanda’s attendance at classes and the hospital wards met the mandatory requirement of 80% and whether he frequently took leave.

The state police had earlier initiated a probe against Asfaqullah Naiya because he was wrongly described as an MD (doctor of medicine) in a pamphlet released by organisers of a health camp in Hooghly district last year. At the time, police raided Naiya’s home in a South 24 Parganas district village.

HT reportedly on February 6 that four senior government doctors seen in the forefront of the agitation were accused by the medical council of disrupting its operations.

Various organisations of senior doctors had come together under the banner of the Joint Platform of Doctors, West Bengal, during the agitation demanding justice for the trainee doctor who was killed in August.

“The government’s pressure tactics cannot crush the movement,” Dr Punyabrata Gun, a convenor of the Joint Platform, said.

Sanjay Roy, a civic volunteer working for the Kolkata Police, is the only one to be convicted in the rape and murder case that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probed on orders of the Calcutta high court. Roy was sentenced to jail for the rest of his life by a Sealdah court on January 18.

CBI has not yet filed charges against Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of RG Kar Medical College, and Abhijit Mondal, the local Tala police station’s former officer-in-charge. Both were arrested on September 14 and accused of tampering with evidence.

Ghosh also faces charges of financial irregularities in a separate case.