E-Paper
Residents of remote West Bengal town reject doctor seen at RG Kar Hospital
The state health department on Tuesday transferred Birupaksha Biswas from the Burdwan Medical College and Hospital to the remote Kakdwip hospital in South 24 Parganas district.
The residents of Kakdwip town in West Bengal’s Sunderbans took to the streets on Thursday in protest against the transfer of Birupaksha Biswas, a government doctor seen at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9 after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor, to their local hospital.
“The residents of the town staged an agitation not only outside the Kakdwip Sub-Divisional Hospital but also on the streets. Left parties also joined the agitation,” a local police officer said on condition of anonymity.
“What guarantee do we have that the arrival of Biswas will not lead to similar crimes at our hospital?” said Padma Ghorai, a homemaker who took part in Thursday’s agitation.
The state health department on Tuesday transferred Biswas from the Burdwan Medical College and Hospital in East Burdwan district to the remote Kakdwip hospital in South 24 Parganas district.
The transfer order was passed shortly after the suspension of former RG Kar Medical College principal Sandip Ghosh who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday night on corruption charges. Ghosh has been interrogated by CBI in the rape and murder case and was also made to undergo a polygraph test.
Biswas, on Wednesday, claimed that his transfer to Kakdwip was nothing but a routine exercise.
“A merit-based counselling was done months ago on the basis of my post-graduation marks. I was given the option to go to either Cooch Behar or Jalpaiguri in north Bengal or Kakdwip in south Bengal. I opted for Kakdwip,” he told the media.
Biswas is alleged to be one of the close aides of Ghosh. Doctors and medical students have been on a relentless agitation since August 9 demanding administrative action against Biswas as well.
Nurses at Kakdwip hospital also staged protests as the agitation spread to the district’s Diamond Harbour Medical College and Hospital, with junior doctors demanding revocation of the transfer order.
Sagnik Midhya, a junior doctor at the Diamond Harbour Medical College and Hospital, said, “We do not want elements like Biswas to be posted at any hospital in our district.”
Neither senior officials at Kakdwip hospital, nor the state health department functionaries commented on the agitation till the filing of this report.
Senior doctors from various organisations, including the West Bengal chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), alleged that Ghosh was running a racket in the health department with the help of several aides, of whom Biswas was one.
During the agitation, an audio clip went viral in which Biswas was purportedly heard threatening a final-year medical student that the latter would not get his certificate if he did not follow Biswas’ orders.
Biswas told the media then that the audio clip was created using artificial intelligence, and that the voice was not his.
However, he did admit that he went to RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9 after hearing about the 31-year-old post-graduate doctor’s alleged rape and murder, though he claimed that he never went to the crime scene, the seminar room of the chest department on the third floor of the emergency building.
