On violence against patients

The rape and murder of a trainee doctor in RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata on August 9, 2024, was a brutal crime but had nothing to do with patients or violence by patients or their attendants against health workers. The accused is a civic volunteer who is said to have frequented the hospital as a tout, fleecing patients by promising to get them a bed or help them get tests done for free or at discounted rates [1]. However, following the incident, the protests by doctors, mostly resident doctors' associations across the country, zeroed in on protection for doctors and health workers from violence and attacks by patients through a central law as one of their main demands [2].