Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Santanu Sen, who had criticised the principal of Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and the affairs of the state health department in the wake of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor, said on Friday that he had been removed from the post of the party’s spokesperson.

Responding to his removal, Sen reiterated his demand for strict action in the rape-murder case of the trainee doctor, as well as in the vandalism at the hospital on Thursday.

A 31-year-old female trainee doctor was raped and killed inside RG Kar Medical College on August 9, leading to a loud outcry. Amid protests over this, a mob vandalised the hospital on the intervening night of August 14 and 15.

A former MP and doctor by profession, Santanu Sen had stated that there had been complaints about the principal of RG Kar Medical College for the last three years. He had remarked that “some people are not giving the right picture to the Chief Minister about what’s happening in the health department”.

On Friday, in a video message, Sen said he got to know from media reports that he had been removed from the post of TMC spokesperson.

“I would like to say two things: whenever I gave a statement as a spokesperson, I neither spoke against the party nor any leader… I stand by what I said from the beginning–the news related to the Health Department is not being accurately conveyed to the CM and Health Minister Mamata Banerjee,” Sen emphasised.

He further stated, “It feels bad when leaders from other parties join ours or when winning candidates from other parties join us and are given respect, while a devoted and true soldier of the party has to face this”. He added that he has worked as a “soldier in all battles of the TMC, and I continue that way even today”.

Meanwhile, protests by doctors, medical students, and political parties intensified following Wednesday’s vandalism at RG Kar Hospital, when a mob stormed the medical college and destroyed properties and devices.