KOLKATA: Indian authorities in Kolkata have sacked the city’s police chief and top health ministry officials after furious protests at the brutal rape and murder of a doctor.
The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied body at a state-run hospital in the eastern megacity on August 9 has stoked nationwide anger at the chronic issue of violence against women.
The murder has triggered protests across India and repeated strikes by medics demanding safer conditions for women.
While many protests and strikes have since calmed in the rest of India, regular demonstrations continue in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced the removal of the Kolkata police commissioner and two health departments officials after a meeting with medics late Monday.
“We have agreed to remove the director of health services and director of medical colleges,” Banerjee told reporters after the meeting.
“Vineet Goyal, commissioner of Kolkata police, will also be removed, as demanded by the junior doctors.”
She also urged the doctors to return to work, saying emergency operations were being affected by their strike.
But Aniket Mahato, spokesman of the West Bengal Junior Doctors Front protest group, said they would not stop demonstrations until investigations in the case were completed.
One man has been detained for the murder, but West Bengal’s state government has faced public criticism over the handling of the investigation.
“We reached an agreement on certain points, but disagreement remains,” Mahato told AFP.
Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the city on Monday, chanting slogans and demanding justice for the victim.
India’s Supreme Court last month ordered a national task force to examine how to bolster security for healthcare workers, saying the brutality of the killing had “shocked the conscience of the nation”.
The gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus.
It became a major political issue, and was seen as one factor in the subsequent success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in elections.
The BJP is the ruling party nationwide, but in West Bengal, the state government is led by the All India Trinamool Congress.
