‘No one is vying for CM chair’: Meet the doctors leading Kolkata protest

But outside the state health department Swasthya Bhawan – the site of the protest — doctors are yet to fully back down. “We need systemic change and we know that will take time,” Lahari Sarkar, one of the protesting doctors, says.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee after the meeting with the doctors at her residence in Kolkata on Monday. (Express photo by Partha Paul)

As parleys with the government continued Wednesday, with the doctors being called for another meeting, The Indian Express spoke to those at the forefront of the protests.

Aniket Mahato, junior doctor, RG Kar

One of the faces of the protest, Mahato was among those who spearheaded a march to press for the resignation of former Kolkata police commissioner Vineet Goyal on September 3. It was during this protest march that young doctors carried a replica of a human spine as a symbolic act to protest police actions.

Originally from Jhargram, Mahato completed his internship and residency at SSKM Medical College and currently holds an MD in anaesthesiology and critical care.

“In the face of our movement, the state government was forced to remove the Kolkata CP, DC North and two state health officials. We consider these steps as a partial win for our movement. It is a joint victory of all of us. There is not one person who is the face of this movement,” he says.

Kinjal Nanda, postgraduate residency in microbiology at RG Kar

He is probably the most easily recognisable face of the protests. A North Kolkata native, Kinjal has also acted in movies such as Hiralal (2018) and Byomkesh Hatyamancha (2022). While he has been accused of targeting the ruling government, Nanda believes it is his familiar face and acting roles that may have made him an easy target.

“I’m a doctor, and so are all the others present here,” Kinjal, who went to Kishore Bharati High School in Dum Dum, says. “Politics holds no interest for me.”

About the movement, he believes that the protesters have done everything they could to cooperate with the state government.

“Mamata Banerjee spoke of resigning from her position, but I believe such tactics are more effective in other political crises. No one is vying for her chair, and out of respect for the position, we decided to engage in dialogue. Even in the future, if we are invited, we will certainly attend,” he says.

Lahari Sarkar, resident junior doctor, RG Kar

It was Lahari, a third-year junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College, and Debashis Haldar, a student of Calcutta Medical College and a senior resident in anaesthesia, who did most of the talking on that rainy night of September 14.

“I kept telling myself that we have the people behind us. We are fighting for the countless people of Bengal. So what if she’s the CM? We cannot buckle under pressure,” Lahari says.

Although she has never actively participated in political rallies, she was part of the June 2019 protests against the assault of a junior doctor at Kolkata’s at the Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital.

Ever since the RG Kar protest began last month, Lahari’s parents call her every hour to check up on her.

“If I don’t reply, they get worried… They keep asking me why am I rubbing so many people the wrong way,” Lahari, a resident of South Kolkata who got her MBBS degree from Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital, says.

Debashis Haldar, student of Calcutta Medical College & a senior resident in anaesthesia

Debashis has been involved in numerous protests involving the medical fraternity in the past – including the 2020 protests for changes in the West Bengal Health Department’s Covid policies.

One of the leaders at the forefront of the September 14 meeting, Haldar, who has also participated in some television debates on the protest, has also faced trolling on social media.

“They call me names and I have received a few threats too. But that doesn’t worry me since we are fighting the good fight,” he says.

Rumelika Kumar, MD (Community Medicine), All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health
Soon after the second failed meeting between Mamata Banerjee and the doctors, a video of Rumelika Kumar in tears and hugging a fellow doctor went viral. Soon, she got a call from her mother, who chided her for crying.

“She said I shouldn’t let them feel they got the better of us,” Rumelika, who has been with the protest from the beginning, says.

She calls this protest a “people’s movement”. “We have normalised sexual violence against women so much that something like this had to happen for us to wake up”.

Amrita Bhattacharya, junior resident, Vivekananda Institute of Medical Sciences

The news of the rape and murder snapped something inside Amrita. “We’ve all been exposed to similar conditions – we’ve done 36-hour shifts, slept in on-call rooms without doors, and walked down the dark corridors of hospital. But we’ve never felt unsafe. When this happened, something stirred in me. It is yet to sink in,” she says.

Asfakullah Naiya, third-year postgraduate trainee in surgery, RG Kar
Asfakullah was on duty the day the junior doctor’s body was discovered in RG Kar. Coming from a conservative business family from the outskirts of the city meant there was opposition to his involvement in the protests. But that didn’t stop Naiya, who felt the cause was personal.

“I couldn’t sit around doing nothing,” he says. “People are saying that our protest is politically coloured but the only colour we have with us is the Tricolour… Our intentions are transparent.”