Kolkata doctor rape-murder: The West Bengal government on Tuesday appointed Manoj Kumar Verma as the new Kolkata Police Commissioner. This comes after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met the agitating doctors to resolve the RG Kar impasse and sacked the former Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal and two others as she ceded to most of the demands put across by the medics.
Meanwhile, Vineet Kumar Goyal has been appointed as the ADG & IGP of STF in West Bengal.
The doctors have been protesting since August 10, seeking justice for the trainee doctor who was raped and murdered at the RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata last month.
Mamata Banerjee, after a meeting with the doctors, announced on Monday midnight that ex-Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal, Director of Medical Education (DME) Kaustav Nayek, and north Kolkata Deputy Commissioner Abhishek Gupta, and Director of health services Debashish Haldar would be removed from their respective posts.
Abhishek Gupta has been transferred to the post of Commanding Officer, Eastern Frontier Rifles, 2nd Battalion.
According to a notification by the state's Health and Family Welfare department on Tuesday, Dr Kaustav Nayak has now been appointed as the Director of Institute of Health and Family Welfare and Debashish Halder has been appointed as the OSD, Public Health at Swasthya Bhawan.
She said that fresh appointments would be made on Tuesday after the scheduled hearing in the Supreme Court. After repeatedly failing to break the impasse due to the doctors' demands of live-telecasting the meeting, the two sides finally met on Monday to discuss about it at Mamata Banerjee's Kalighat residence.
"Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal and Deputy Commissioner of the North Division Abhishek Gupta will be transferred. The doctors had claimed that Goyal had earlier told them that he wanted to step down because they had lost faith in him. We have accommodated his request and transferred him to a position he had asked for...We will announce the name of the new police commissioner after 4 pm on Tuesday after the scheduled hearing in Supreme Court gets over," Banerjee announced after the meeting with the doctors at her residence.
Banerjee also said that Vineet Kumar Goyal expressed his readiness to resign from his post during the meeting with the doctors. "At 4 pm, Vineet will hand over the responsibility to the new CP," she said.
The Bengal CM had also stated that "no punitive action" will be taken against the doctors and that the state had agreed to accept "almost all" of their demands. "Keeping in mind the plight of the common people, we did the best we could. I now appeal to the doctors to return to work," she added.
The doctors had been demanding Goyal's resignation over his handling of the vandalism at RG Kar Hospital during a protest march on August 14. He was accused of mismanaging the situation and also received political backlash.
These decisions were formalised and signed by Chief Secretary Manoj Pant, following which the delegation of 42 doctors who attended the meeting countersigned them. It was also decided during the talks that a special task force, headed by Pant, will oversee the safety measures in the hospitals.