Hospitals and clinics across India have begun turning away patients except for emergency cases as medical professionals started a 24-hour shutdown in protest against the rape and murder of a doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata.
More than 1 million doctors were expected to join Saturday’s strike, paralysing medical services across the world’s most populous nation. Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergency cases.
The strike, which began at 6am (0030 GMT), cut off access to elective medical procedures and outpatient consultations, according to a statement by the Indian Medical Association (IMA).
Casualty departments at hospitals, which deal with emergencies, will continue to be staffed.
A 31-year-old trainee doctor was raped and murdered last week inside a medical college in Kolkata where she worked, triggering nationwide protests among doctors and drawing parallels to the notorious gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012.
Outside the RG Kar Medical College, where the crime took place, a heavy police presence was seen on Saturday while the hospital premises were deserted, according to the ANI news agency.
Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, which includes Kolkata, has backed the protests across the state, demanding the investigation be fast-tracked and the guilty punished in the strongest way possible.
A large number of private clinics and diagnostic centres remained closed in Kolkata on Saturday.
Dr Sandip Saha, a private paediatrician in the city, told Reuters that he would not attend to patients except in emergencies.
In Odisha state, patients were queueing up and senior doctors were trying to manage the rush, said Dr Prabhas Ranjan Tripathy, additional medical superintendent of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the city of Bhubaneswar.
“Resident doctors are on full strike, and because of that, the pressure is mounting on all faculty members, which means senior doctors,” he said.
Patients queued up at hospitals, some unaware that the action would not allow them to get medical attention.
“I have spent 500 rupees on travel to come here. I have paralysis and a burning sensation in my feet, head and other parts of my body,” a patient at SCB Medical College hospital at Cuttack in Odisha told a local television channel.
“We were not aware of the strike. What can we do? We have to return home.”
Anger at the failure of tough laws to deter a rising tide of violence against women has fuelled protests by doctors and women’s groups.
“Women form the majority of our profession in this country,” the IMA president, RV Asokan, told Reuters on Friday. “Time and again, we have asked for safety for them.”
A strike that doctors began on Monday was more limited, affecting only government hospitals and elective surgeries.
Thousands of people marched through various Indian cities on Friday to protest over the trainee doctor’s case, demanding justice and better security at medical campuses and hospitals.
Demonstrators held signs calling for accountability for the rape and killing as they gathered near parliament in New Delhi. In Kolkata, protesting doctors chanted “We want justice” and waved signs that read “No safety, no service!”. Similar protests were held in other Indian cities such as Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Political parties, Bollywood actors and other high-profile celebrities have voiced shock at the crime and called for stricter punishments for the perpetrators.
The protests, which have generally been peaceful, began on 9 August when police discovered the trainee doctor’s bloodied body at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital’s seminar hall in Kolkata. She had gone there to rest at night during a long shift.
A police volunteer, designated to help police officers and their families who needed to be admitted to the hospital, has been arrested and charged with the crime.
Adding to anger, it was reported on Thursday that on 8 August police in Uttarakhand discovered the body of a young nurse who had been raped and murdered nine days earlier while walking home from work.
Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India. In 2022, police recorded 31,516 reports of rape – a 20% increase from 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
Guardian staff and Associated Press contributed to this report