In the capital, New Delhi, junior doctors wearing white coats held posters that read, “Doctors are not punching bags”, as they sat in protest outside a large government hospital to demand an investigation, Reuters Television images showed.
Thousands of patients were left stranded by similar protests in cities such as Lucknow, the capital of the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, and in the western tourist resort state of Goa that crimped some hospital services, media said.
“Pedestrian working conditions, inhuman workloads and violence in the workplace are the reality,” the Indian Medical Association, the biggest grouping of doctors in the country, told Health Minister J P Nadda in a letter.
A health ministry spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Doctors maintain their workplace environment is unsafe, even after the weekend arrest of a police volunteer in Kolkata for the doctor’s murder and the resignation of the principal of the medical college where it happened.
City police chief Vineet Kumar Goyal told reporters a case had been registered against the suspect under provisions of the law relating to rape and murder.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told reporters she had given state police a deadline of Sunday to complete their investigation, or she would hand it to federal agencies.
Emergency services stayed suspended on Tuesday in almost all the government-run medical college hospitals in Kolkata, state official N S Nigam told Reuters, adding that the government was assessing the impact on health services.
Doctors in India’s crowded and often squalid government hospitals, who find themselves overworked and underpaid, sometimes also end up bearing the brunt of violence by those angered at medical services they see as falling short.
