Lack of Institutional Safety for Doctors Is Systemic: Supreme Court Forms National Task Force After R.G. Kar Crime

On 9 August 2024 a postgraduate doctor on duty was murdered, and allegedly raped, inside the seminar room of the hospital; her name and images were then circulated on social media (para 1). Writ petitions were filed in the Calcutta High Court, and it has been alleged that her parents were first told she had committed suicide and that the FIR was registered late, and on 13 August the High Court transferred the investigation to the CBI (paras 2-3). Protests spread across the country, a mob vandalised the hospital's Emergency Ward on 15 August, and the Indian Medical Association called a 24-hour withdrawal of services (para 4).

The Court could not comprehend how the State was unprepared for the vandalism of a hospital where a crime was under investigation (para 5). Open access to hospitals and anger over patients' deaths have made medical staff targets of violence, a portent of systemic failure to protect them (para 6). Women professionals face added risk, including sexual violence by colleagues and superiors within medical hierarchies, and safe conditions of work are central to equality of opportunity (para 7). State laws punishing violence against medical staff do not address its institutional causes (para 8). The Court listed the failures on the ground: scant duty rooms, thirty-six hour shifts, few guards, no weapons screening, missing CCTV, dingy spaces and no transport (para 9). A national consensus on protocols must be evolved after consulting all stakeholders (para 10). The Task Force is to plan for preventing violence, including gender-based violence, and for an enforceable national protocol of dignified and safe working conditions (para 12). The 2013 workplace sexual harassment law applies to hospitals, which must have Internal Complaints Committees (para 12).