A team of senior officers of India’s Central Bureau of Investigation today reached Kolkata to investigate the rape and murder of a doctor at a state-run hospital in the city, an incident which sparked outrage among doctors, leading to a third day of strikes.
The body of the trainee doctor was found on August 9 in the seminar hall of R G Kar Medical College and Hospital.
The CBI team, which comprises medical and forensic experts, will visit the location of the crime, said sources at the central government agency.
The visit by the CBI team comes a day after the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday ordered the transfer of the probe from the Kolkata Police to the central agency.
Meanwhile, the strike by doctors has continued across India, according to reports coming in from Delhi, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and several other states.
Healthcare services were severely disrupted in outpatient departments (OPDs) in hospitals across the nation and at almost all medical facilities in the state of West Bengal because of this.
Long queues were seen at ticket counters of OPDs of all government hospitals where senior doctors joined their junior counterparts to protest against the crime.
“We have no new demand. We have seen that attempts have been made to provide a shield to a group of persons. Some people have tried to tamper with the evidence by starting construction work on the same floor of the R G Kar Hospital where our sister was raped and murdered. We do not see any reason to stop our protest,” an agitating doctor said.
The Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA) has called off its strike after Indian Health Minister J P Nadda accepted their demands.
However, medics at the Indian government-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the Indira Gandhi Hospital and other resident doctors’ associations, including the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA), said on Tuesday that their stir would continue until a central law to curb attacks on medical personnel is implemented and a concrete solution is found.
