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The Supreme Court on Wednesday instructed hospitals, including AIIMS New Delhi, to regularize the unauthorised absence of doctors who had participated in protests following the rape and murder of a doctor at RG Kar Hospital, Kolkata.
A bench, led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, took note of submissions from a doctors’ body, which pointed out that some hospitals had followed the court’s August 22, 2024, order by regularizing the absence of doctors.
However, institutions like AIIMS Delhi had treated the protest period as leave of absence instead.
The Chief Justice clarified that if protesting doctors had resumed work after the Supreme Court’s order, their absence should be regularized, and not treated as unauthorized leave. He emphasized that this ruling was based on the specific circumstances of the case and was not intended to set a precedent.
A lawyer representing the medical body expressed concerns that treating the protest period as leave might cause complications, especially for medical PG students. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre, assured the court that hospitals would adhere to its direction, given that the case was non-adversarial.
The bench highlighted that while some institutions like AIIMS Kalyani, Gorakhpur, and PGI Chandigarh had complied by regularizing the doctors’ absences, others, including AIIMS Delhi, had opted to treat it as leave.
The Supreme Court’s order from August 22 last year had called for protesting doctors to return to work, urging that “justice and medicine” should not be interrupted. The court had also stated that no coercive action would be taken against doctors who resumed their duties following the protests.
The protests erupted after a horrific crime in which a trainee doctor was raped and murdered at RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata. The incident sparked nationwide outrage and led to extended protests in West Bengal. The Supreme Court was hearing a suo-motu case related to the crime.
On January 20, a Kolkata trial court sentenced the convict, Sanjay Roy, to life imprisonment for the brutal crime.
The body of the post-graduate trainee doctor was found in the hospital’s seminar room on August 9 last year, prompting an immediate investigation that led to Roy’s arrest the following day.
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