Bengal politicians join citizens’ RG Kar rally protest

Kolkata: As citizens hit the streets in Kolkata on Tuesday evening at a rally jointly organised by 40 organisations against the rape and murder of a junior doctor of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in August this year, senior West Bengal politicians also joined the rally.

Among those participating in the rally include the CPI-M politburo members Suyakanta Mishra and Md Salim and the newly appointed West Bengal Pradesh Congress (WBPCC) president Suvankar Sarkar. All of them claimed that they had joined the rally not as politicians but as individual citizens in solidarity to the citizens’ call for justice.

Also a participant in the rally was the retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Jawhar Sircar, who resigned both from the chair of Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member and from the party last month, as a mark of protest against the rape and murder as well as the corruption in general administration in the state government.

“I am here responding to the call for justice for the victim. As I previously said also that it will not be fair to give any political tag to the spontaneous mass protests against this ghastly crime, I am saying that again,” he said.

Besides politicians and doctors, representatives from various mass organisations working for the rights of sex workers, people from transgender and Queer communities and socially and economically backward people.

One of the striking features of Tuesday evening’s rally was the presence of the city’s rickshaw pullers in large numbers expressing solidarity.

On Wednesday, when the occasions of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth and Mahalaya Amavasya (A significant day in Hinduism for performing rituals to honour ancestors) will coincide, West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Forum (WBJDF), which is spearing heading the movement against the ghastly rape and murder.

WBJDF has resumed cease-work protests in all medical colleges & hospitals in the state in support of their demands from Tuesday.

Their demands included a protracted judicial process to ensure justice for the rape and murder victim, immediate removal of the state health secretary, and introduction of a centralised referral system and digital bed vacancy monitor, among others.