INDIA – India’s Supreme Court has set up a national task force of doctors to make recommendations on workplace safety following the rape and murder of a trainee medic at a state hospital that prompted nationwide protests. The court, which took up the case on its own, said on Tuesday that the doctors’ panel was being established to frame guidelines for the safety and protection of medical workers across the country. It directed the task force to submit an interim report within three weeks and a final report within two months.

India has been outraged by the 31-year-old trainee’s assault and killing inside a state-run hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata, the crime again highlighting sexual violence against women in the country. Her bloodied and brutalised body was found on August 9. “Protecting safety of doctors and women doctors is a matter of national interest and principle of equality. The nation cannot await [for] another rape for it to take some steps,” Chief Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud said.

“If women cannot go to a place of work and be safe, then we are denying them the basic conditions of equality,” said Chandrachud, who headed a three-judge bench of the court. The court also asked federal police to submit a report on Thursday on the status of its investigation into the woman’s murder at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. It additionally ordered a federal paramilitary force to provide security at the Kolkata hospital after women doctors said they did not feel safe after the crime and subsequent vandalisation of the facility by unidentified men.

Doctors and healthcare workers in India have held protests and candlelight vigils and have also been refusing to see nonemergency patients in their demand for a swift criminal investigation. The Supreme Court requested all doctors to return to work. (Aljazeera)…[+]