Kolkata: Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a four-time Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member and medical practitioner, on Sunday apologised for her recent derogatory remarks about female doctors while participating in a recent panel discussion on the R.G Kar rape and murder case.
During a panel discussion held by a vernacular television channel, she stated that there was a tendency during her time as a medical student in which female students obtained qualifying grades by “sitting on the lap” of teaching doctors.
She further stated that pupils who frequently objected to it were given lower grades. She never expected 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” remarks drew widespread condemnation from the medical community, with various doctor’s associations even demanding her suspension from the Indian Medical Association (IMA).
Finally, on Sunday morning, she released a statement on social media apologising and expressing her regret if her words harmed anyone’s feelings.
“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 R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital alumnus.
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Dr Dastidar had previously attracted criticism for making casual comments about delicate matters such as rape. Following the 2012 gang-rape of a Christian woman in Kolkata, she made a similar remark in which she disregarded the complaint even before the inquiry was completed. She described the incident as a “misunderstanding between a woman and her client”.
Her statements were an indirect reference to what happened after the victim exited a nightclub.
The victim, who died later in 2015, vehemently opposed that remark. She asked two crucial questions: whether going to a nightclub alone was a criminal offence and whether the MP meant that anyone had the right to rape a sex worker.
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–IANS
