Hardly couple of days after its formation on Saturday afternoon the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Association (WBJDA) on Monday wrote to the chief secretary (CS) Manoj Pant, health secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam and director of medical education (DME) demanding probe on how their rival counterpart West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front (WBJDF), a body formed by postgraduate trainee (PGT) doctors, house staff and interns of different state government medical colleges, raised huge funds around Rs 4.75 crore in the name of justice for the incident.
The newly-minted WBJDA reportedly backed by the ruling Trinamul Congress has submitted eight-point demands to Mr Pant and other officials in the health department urging them exemplary punishments for culprits involved in the R G Kar Hospital incident.
The association has also demanded necessary strong action against persons named in the charge sheet in connection with the case.
Soon after the incident at the R G Kar Medical College WBJDF’s leading members like Dr Aniket Mahato, Dr Debashis halder, Dr Kinjal Nanda, Dr Rumelika Kumar and others had brought strong allegations of the ‘threat culture’.
On Saturday, the newly-floated WBJDA while countering their counterpart WBJDF told reporters during a press conference in the city had alleged that the latter has raised funds Rs 4.75 crore in the name of ‘justice for R G Kar’ movement.
“We would meet the chief minister to inform her about it. They (WBJDF) are creating a state of lawlessness in state-run healthcare establishments in the name of ‘justice for R G Kar’. We were the first who had launched a protest movement demanding for the heinous incident keeping healthcare services in government hospitals normal. We didn’t stop work but organised a protest movement,” junior doctor Shrish Chakraborty of WBJDA had told the media on Saturday.
“They (WBJDF) started a threat culture against us because we didn’t agree with their cease-work in government hospitals. The inquiry committee of the R G Kar hospital under their pressure suspended our 53 junior doctors and tried to end our career,” according to him.
Dr Shrish Chakraborty and Dr Sourav Das were among the suspended junior doctors.
Protesting against the suspension order the junior doctors moved the high court and got a stay-order on the inquiry committee’s decision to suspend them.