The pain of medical fraternity over the gruesome rape-murder of a medic in a Kolkata hospital resonated in Supreme Court on Tuesday. The apex court bench posed the same questions to Mamata Banerjee’s government that are still being asked by the public at large. The apex court also expressed its deepest sympathy for the victim. The court’s observations over laxity on part of Kolkata Police clearly reflected the anger that has been visible among the agitating doctors. I hope the court’s directions for deployment of CISF at the hospital and setting up a National Task Force to formulate security protocol for health workers will increase the trust of the people in the system. People now expect that the victim’s family would now get justice. The pressure is now on Mamata Banerjee and it is showing. The same Kolkata Police which had been avoiding naming the ex-principal Dr Sandip Ghosh till now, is now filing case after case against him. The stern attitude of the Supreme Court is now showing results. Meanwhile, CBI is speedily trying to fill up the missing links about people supposed to be involved in this gruesome crime and one should expect the real picture to emerge soon. CBI will have to file its status report before Supreme Court on Thursday, but one must not expect the whole truth to emerge quickly. Supreme Court has clearly said that the Kolkata crime should not be seen as an isolated case, because the crime revealed the real working conditions of doctors. It is a systemic flaw that needs to be corrected. It is true that had the doctors not raised their voice of protests in the streets across India, the attention of the court and government would not have gone to their abysmal and inhuman working conditions. There are no proper rest rooms for doctors and nurses in most of the hospitals. They do not have proper beds, nor do their rest rooms have curtains. Female doctors and healthcare workers have to work and sleep in pathetic condition. Male and female doctors do not have separate toilets. At some places, the toilets are in a nauseating condition. Many hospitals do not have cctv cameras for rest rooms. Though similar working conditions do not prevail in all the hospitals, but the situation is abysmal in most of the government hospitals. I hope the National Task Force, consisting of top doctors of India, will look into such matters too, apart from suggesting practical methods for their security. One more aspect of the ongoing doctors’ protest is the woes being faced by patients requiring urgent surgeries. Work in most of the government hospitals has been badly affected due to the strike. Personally, I know of several cases in the last two days in which patients, in critical cases, needed to be sent to ICUs, but there are no doctors manning those ICUs. Thousands of surgeries have been postponed. I hope the agitating doctors will now listen to the apex court’s appeal and return to work soon. There are several lakhs patients awaiting urgent medical intervention. It is the duty and responsibility of the doctors to take care of their treatment, on a war footing.