RG Kar protest: Hunger strike by junior doctors enters day 8

Kolkata: The fast-unto-death agitation by junior doctors in the wake of rape and murder of a junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital here entered the eighth day on Saturday, coinciding with the festival of Vijaya Dashami.

The number of protestors on hunger strike at Esplanade has increased to eight after two more junior doctors, Alolika Ghorui and Parichay Panda, joined the other six after Friday midnight.

The hunger strike started on October 5 with six junior doctors -- Tanaya Panja, Snigdha Hazra, Sayantani Ghosh Hazra, Anushtup Mukhopadhyay, Arnab Mukhopadhyay and Pulastya Acharya.

On October 6, Aniket Mahato from RG Kar Medical College and Hospital joined the hunger strike. However, after Thursday midnight, Mahato's health severely deteriorated and he had to be admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital, thus bringing down the number of fasting junior doctors again to six.

But now with Parichay Panda and Alolika Ghorui joining the hunger strike, the number has increased to eight.

At the same time, two junior doctors, namely Alok Kumar Verma, a first-year postgraduate student of Psychiatry of North Bengal Medical College & Hospital (NBMCH), and Souvik Banerjee, an intern at the North Bengal Dental College & Hospital, too are undergoing parallel hunger-strike within the NBMCH campus at Siliguri in Darjeeling district.

Meanwhile, the parents of Snigdha Hazra, one of the striking doctors at the Esplanade dais and who currently resides at Bankura district, have accused the district police of sending cops to their residence during wee hours and putting pressure on them to convince their daughter to withdraw the from hunger strike.

Snigdha recently got married to her fellow junior doctor Debasish Halder, who is also one of the leading faces of junior doctors’ protest against the rape and murder issue.

Meanwhile, Citizens for Justice, a platform of representatives from civil society, has given a call for a protest march to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) office at Salt Lake in the northern outskirts of Kolkata on Saturday evening.

The contention of the forum is why CBI, in its investigation on the rape and murder issue, has not made any progress over what was revealed in the initial investigation by Kolkata Police.