Mumbai, March 6: The eight-day-old doctors’ strike in Maharashtra today entered the courtrooms with its leaders securing interim bail and gearing up to file a writ petition in Bombay High Court by Wednesday.

Leaders of the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors, which is spearheading the agitation, said legal opinion was being sought to draft a comprehensive writ petition detailing the doctors’ problems.

On Saturday, 42 association office-bearers had moved a sessions court fearing a crackdown by the state government, which has invoked the Maharashtra Essential Services Maintenance Act (Mesma) against the strike. The court granted them protection from possible arrest till March 8.

“They apprehended arrest under Section 7 of Mesma, which is non-bailable,” the doctors’ advocate, Raghuraj Deshpande, said.

The government, which issued sack notices to 760 resident doctors on Saturday, was in no mood to relent today. It held “walk-in” interviews and selected 13 doctors for recruitment, an official said.

The resident doctors’ association, which is trying to spread the agitation nationwide, claimed support was pouring in from other states. The doctors had claimed last week that they had received support letters from resident doctors in New Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Today, its spokesperson Dr Ramnath Ghute said: “Doctors in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Orissa have pledged their support and would organise ‘black band’ protests in their respective states.

“The Maharashtra government admits that our demands are valid, but it says it can’t fulfil them. But termination and de-registration is a brutal blow to doctors who spend so many years trying to acquire medical education.”

Dr Ashwini Dalmiya, convener of the Federation of Resident Doctors Association in Delhi, said over phone: “All associations today met at Maulana Azad hospital. We have decided to organise a black day across Delhi hospitals on Tuesday in support of the Maharashtra strike. We will follow it up with a daylong dharna at Rajghat on Wednesday.”

The Maharashtra Nurses’ Federation and the Indian Medical Association are supporting the strike.

To fill the gap left by over 3,079 doctors joining the strike across the state, the municipal corporation today brought in private doctors and health officials to run the outpatient departments.