Kolkata's RG Kar medical college under siege: When emergency equipment, drugs, and refrigerators destroyed in violent attack
Times of India | 16 August 2024
KOLKATA: Vandals armed with sticks, shafts, bottles and bricks usurped the night Kolkata sought to reclaim Wednesday, storming RG Kar Medical College past midnight and unleashing 40 minutes of mayhem that didn’t spare even critical care units and left doctors and nurses pulverised soon after spontaneous street protests against a 31-year-old PG student's rape-murder.
Ten suspects were arrested and three others detained for the violence.
Police also released photographs of the vandalism, circling 80 faces in red and seeking help from the public to identify them.
As the mob coursed through the campus from around 12.30am Thursday, barricades fell and the small police team deployed there scurried for cover, leaving the vandals to manhandle the medical staff, destroy emergency beds, ransack two critical care units and turn the medicine storeroom upside down.
Lifesaving drugs, injections, and other supplies were strewn across the floor. A refrigerator was smashed out of shape. Shards of glass and broken plyboards lined the admission area of the emergency department. Torn documents lay here, there, everywhere.
The seminar hall of RG Kar, where the Aug 9 rape-murder occurred, was untouched.
The attack spilled over to outside the hospital soon after. Police vehicles and CCTV cameras were damaged as the mob targeted the cops at the RG Kar outpost, injuring several of them.
The arrival of police reinforcements seemed to make no difference, with the vandals taking them on, eyewitnesses said. It took a RAF contingent to push the mob back with tear gas and batons amid a retaliatory shower of bricks and stones.
One group was spotted sprinting down the side of the canal along RG Kar to escape being caught.
City police commissioner Vineet Goyal, who had arrived by then, blamed the spread of “misinformation” through various media for the violence. “DC North was seriously injured while trying to protect the protesters. He has lost consciousness. What happened here is due to misinformation. Kolkata Police is concerned about this issue,” he said.
Sources said most of the vandals seen in pictures of the violence were residents of north Kolkata’s Belgachhia slum, known locally as Belbasti. Some youth from the neighbourhood near Ratan Babu's Ghat on the Hooghly riverbank were also involved in the rampage, they said.
Belbasti, a one-sq km span under Kolkata Municipal Corporation's Ward 3, has a Trinamool councillor. TMC removed Thursday former Rajya Sabha MP Shantanu Sen, whose wife is a councillor of Ward 5, as the party's spokesperson. It clarified that the step was taken because of Sen's "comments out of turn" rather than anything to do with the vandalism at RG Kar, which is part of the ward his wife represents.
At the hospital, a doctor said, "We had planned an all-women march to Shyambazar as part of the 'Reclaim the Night' protest. Suddenly, a large crowd gathered outside, and the police couldn't stop them. They broke in, and we had to run for our lives. They attacked everyone they saw, including patients and doctors, causing serious injuries."
A security guard at the hospital said there were "500 to 1,000 people" in the mob.
CM Mamata Banerjee said the vandals were "outsiders" allegedly sent by BJP and the Left. "It's a Ram and Baam (BJP and Left) conspiracy. They have conducted this rampage. I have seen videos – those with white flags are DYFI, and those carrying national flags are BJP," she said.
Governor CV Ananda Bose spoke to the protesting junior doctors Thursday. "I am with you. You will receive justice. We are all with you. We all need to work together," he said.