Derogatory statements on female doctors: Trinamool MP tenders apology

Kolkata: Even as protests and rallies continue to gain momentum across the country questioning women safety post the horrendous incident of rape and murder of a trainee doctor at R G Kar hospital last month, controversial statements by political leaders are amplifying the ramifications on the issue.

Four-time Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a medical practitioner in private life, on Sunday, issued a statement tendering an apology for her recent derogatory comments that she made about female doctors while participating in a recent panel discussion on the R G Kar hospital rape-murder case.

Participating in that panel discussion organised by a vernacular television channel, she claimed there was a trend during her days as a medical student where female students secured qualifying marks by "sitting on the lap" of tutor doctors.

She also said the students who often protested against that were granted lesser marks. She also said that she had never imagined that the "trend of getting qualifying marks by sitting on the lap of medical- teachers would ultimately take such a nasty shape whether even the thesis papers of the protesting students are kept on hold".

Her “sitting on the lap” comments attracted massive criticism from the medical fraternity with different doctors' associations even demanding her suspension from the Indian Medical Association (IMA). Finally, on Sunday morning she issued a statement on her social media world apologising for her comments and said that she was sorry if her words had hurt anyone’s sentiment.

“I retract my statement. My intention has been and will always be to champion the cause of well-being and rights of women,” she said in her statement posted on her Meta account. Incidentally, Ghosh Dastidar is an alumnus of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital.

Earlier, also Ghosh Dastidar had faced criticism for making loose comments on sensitive issues like rape. After the 2012 gang-rape of a Christian woman in Kolkata, she made a similar remark where even before the investigation she dismissed the complaint and described the event as a “misunderstanding between a woman and her client”. Her comments were an indirect reference to the event happening after the victim came out of a nightclub.

The victim, who died later in 2015, strongly objected to that statement then. She raised two pertinent questions on whether going to a nightclub on her own was a crime and whether the MP meant that anyone has the liberty to rape a sex worker.
(With inputs from IANS)