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.
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 hit 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.
IMA General Secretary Anil Kumar J Nayak told the ANI news agency that his group had urged Nadda to step up security at medical facilities.
The health ministry did not immediately comment.
A high court in Kolkata ordered that the criminal investigation be transferred to India’s federal police, the Central Bureau of Investigation, indicating that the authorities were treating the case as a national priority.
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 have long complained of being overworked and underpaid and say not enough is done to curb violence levelled at them by people angered over the medical care on offer.
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