Supreme Court: In a suo motu matter concerning the rape and murder of a doctor at the RG Kar Medical College Hospital at Kolkata, the three judge bench of Dr. DY Chandrachud, CJI, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, JJ, said that the West Bengal Government cannot prevent women doctors from working night shifts or beyond 12-hour shift. Further, the Court directed the State Government to form the broad-based monitoring committee in all hospitals to deal with safety issues; Formation of confidential grievance redressal system; Internal Complaints Committee in accordance with Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act, Setting up of counselling centres with qualified professionals to deal with the stress faced by the doctors.
Concerning the notification dated 19-08-2024 issued by the West Bengal Government which stated that woman will not work night shifts or more than a twelve hour shift should be avoided for female doctors, the Court while disapproving the notification, said that the duty hours should be same and reasonable for all doctors and that it would be inappropriate to target women doctors as compared to their male counterparts. The Court emphasised that the basic purpose is to ensure security concerns for all men and women doctors.
The Court said that the women doctors do not demand any special conditions, imposing conditions like these can pose a serious impediment to their medical careers. They expect a similar condition for work and safety. The hours of duty should be similar across the spectrum.
The Court noted that an affidavit has been filed by the State of West Bengal explaining the steps being taken for upgrading restrooms, toilet facilities, CCTV cameras in Government medical college and hospital.
The Court viewed that there is a critical importance that the participatory process should be followed by the State and the concerns of doctors should be taken into account. To facilitate this, the Court directed that a team consisting of District Magistrate, Superintendent of police, Principal of each medical college, each representative of senior and junior doctors must be associated in the process. The Court asked that the work should be carried out within 2 weeks from the date of this order.
The Court also asked the State Government to take necessary steps to ensure biometric facilities for controlling access to the duty rooms and rest rooms.
The Court noted that on 13-09-2024, the Department of Health and Family Welfare, West Bengal passed an order to engage 1514 security personnel on contractual basis in the Government medical colleges and hospitals under the programme named “raat er saathi”.
With the above confident building measures, the Court also urged the Junior doctors to come back to work.
The Court further recorded in the order that the State has given an assurance that no punitive actions will be taken against the doctors who will return to work.
The Court also directed Wikipedia to remove the victim’s name from its pages.
The bench observed that “in the interest of maintaining dignity and privacy of the deceased the governing principle is that identity of victim in a rape and murder case shall not be disclosed”.
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Source: Supreme Court Live stream