After Mamata’s Nephew, TMC MP Dev Shows Solidarity with Doctors, Questions Motive Behind the Assault

Kolkata: Tollywood actor and Trinamool Congress MP Dev is the latest to show solidarity with the ongoing protests by doctors at the NRS Medical College in Kolkata. Dev supported the doctors and questioned the motive behind such violent attacks.

“I would like to question why they (doctors) will be assaulted repeatedly. They save lives and they are being assaulted. It is our responsibility to provide them security,” the TMC MP said, adding that the doctors should get security to ensure such acts of violence do not take place in the future.

Providing security to doctors in all the hospitals is the responsibility of the police and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is the head of state home department, Dev wrote. He also requested the doctors to consider the plight of lakhs of patients across the state. “Lakhs of patients are depending on doctors. Please stand by them as they are feeling helpless. Let good sense prevail. There has to be a solution.”

Doctors in Kolkata and other parts of West Bengal are at loggerheads with Banerjee and her administration after a mob attacked resident doctors at the NRS Medical College on Monday night and critically injured a doctor.

The doctors at the NRS hospital started a strike on Tuesday which has snowballed and spread across the state and other parts of the country and has now reached Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and other prominent cities.

Among the first to show solidarity with the medicos was Kolkata mayor and Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim’s daughter, Shabba Hakim, and Banerjee’s nephew, Abesh Banerjee.

Abesh, son of Mamata’s brother Kartick Banerjee, is her youngest nephew and a junior doctor in Kolkata’s KPC Medical College. He is also the president of his college’s students’ association. His decision to lead a march in supporting of the doctors protesting at NRS Hospital raised eyebrows. With a poster in hand, he was seen at the protest in his college on Thursday and Friday.

On June 12, a day before Banerjee condemned the strike and warned of action against the doctors, Abesh was among those who led a march from KPC Medical College and Hospital in Jadavpur towards NRS Medical College and Hospital.

In a video posted on social media, he was heard shouting slogans in favour of the agitating doctors across the state. One of the protesters marching along with him held a banner saying, “Stop violence against doctors, KPCMCH stands with NRS.”

Abesh’s protest video came at a time when the Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim’s daughter Shabba took to Facebook to register her protest against the government and police inaction.

She wrote, “For those who do not know doctors in government and most private hospitals are boycotting OPD but are still working in emergency. Unlike other professions we can’t just decide not to work because at the end of the day we have humanity. If there was a bus or taxi strike not one taxi driver or bus driver would provide you with any service no matter how dire the situation.”

Party insiders feel that the resentment within the party members, children of party leaders and her own family members has left Banerjee perplexed.

The strike enters its fifth day today and reports of mass resignations of doctors are pouring in from across the state.