Activists and doctors across India continued to protest on Wednesday to demand justice for a female doctor, who was raped and murdered while on duty in a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.
Feminist groups rallied on the streets in protests titled “Reclaim the Night” in Kolkata overnight on Wednesday – on the eve of India’s independence day – in solidarity with the victim, demanding the principal of RG Kar Medical College resign. Some feminist protesters also marched well beyond Kolkata, including in the capital Delhi.
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While the protests were largely peaceful, a small mob of men stormed the medical college and vandalised property. This group was dispersed by the police.
This comes after two days of nationwide protests by doctors following the incident at RG Kar Medical College in West Bengal’s capital city. “Sit-in demonstrations and agitation in the hospital campus will continue,” one of the protesting doctors, identified as Dr Mridul, told Al Jazeera.
Services in some medical centres were halted indefinitely, and marches and vigils shed light on issues of sexual violence, as well as doctors’ safety in the world’s most populous nation.
What happened to the doctor in Kolkata?
A 31-year-old trainee doctor’s dead body, bearing multiple injuries, was found on August 9 in a government teaching hospital in Kolkata.
The parents of the victim were initially told “by hospital authorities that their daughter had committed suicide,” lawyer and women’s rights activist Vrinda Grover told Al Jazeera. But an autopsy confirmed that the victim was raped and killed.
Grover has appeared for victims in sexual violence cases in India in the past, including Bilkis Bano, a Muslim woman who was gang-raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, and Soni Sori, a tribal activist based in Chhattisgarh state.
Thousands of doctors marched in Kolkata on Monday, demanding better security measures and justice for the victim.
On Tuesday, the Kolkata High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA) called for a nationwide halting of elective services in hospitals starting on Monday. Elective services are medical treatments that can be deferred or are not deemed medically necessary.
On Tuesday, FORDA announced on its X account that it is calling off the strike after Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda accepted protest demands.
One of these demands was solidifying the Central Protection Act, intended to be a central law to protect medical professionals from violence, which was proposed in the parliament’s lower house in 2022, but has not yet been enacted.
FORDA said that the ministry would begin working on the Act within 15 days of the news release, and that a written statement from the ministry was expected to be released soon.
Press release regarding call off of strike.
In our fight for the sad incident at R G Kar, the demands raised by us have been met in full by the @OfficeofJPNadda , with concrete steps in place, and not just verbal assurances.
Central Healthcare Protection Act ratification… pic.twitter.com/OXdSZgM1Jc
— FORDA INDIA (@FordaIndia) August 13, 2024
Why are some Indian doctors continuing to protest?
However, other doctors’ federations and hospitals have said they will not back down on the strike until a concrete solution is found, including a central law to curb attacks on doctors.
Those continuing to strike included the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA), Delhi-based All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Indira Gandhi Hospital, local media reported.
Ragunandan Dixit, the general secretary of the AIIMS Resident Doctors’ Association, said that the indefinite strike will continue until their demands are met, including a written guarantee of the implementation of the Central Protection Act.
Medical professionals in India want a central law that makes violence against doctors a non-bailable, punishable offence, in hopes that it deters such violent crimes against doctors in the future.
Those continuing to protest also call for the dismissal of the principal of the college, who was transferred. “We’re demanding his termination, not just transfer,” Dr Abdul Waqim Khan, a protesting doctor told ANI news agency. “We’re also demanding a death penalty for the criminal,” he added.
“Calling off the strike now would mean that female resident doctors might never receive justice,” Dr Dhruv Chauhan, member of the National Council of the Indian Medical Association’s Junior Doctors’ Network told local news agency Press Trust of India (PTI).
Which states in India saw doctors’ protests?
While the protests started in West Bengal’s Kolkata on Monday, they spread across the country on Tuesday.
The capital New Delhi, union territory Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow and city Prayagraj, Bihar capital Patna and southern state Goa also saw doctors’ protests.
Who is the suspect in the Kolkata rape case?
Local media reported that the police arrested suspect Sanjoy Roy, a civic volunteer who would visit the hospital often. He has unrestricted access to the ward and the police found compelling evidence against him.
The parents of the victim told the court that they suspect that it was a case of gang rape, local media reported.
Why is sexual violence on the rise in India?
Sexual violence is rampant in India, where 90 rapes were reported on average every day in 2022.
Laws against sexual violence were made stricter following a rape case in 2012, when a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern was brutally gang-raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi. Four men were hanged for the gang rape, which had triggered a nationwide protests.
But despite new laws in place, “the graph of sexual violence in India continues to spiral unabated,” said Grover.
She added that in her experience at most workplaces, scant attention is paid to diligent and rigorous enforcement of the laws.
“It is regrettable that government and institutions respond only after the woman has already suffered sexual assault and often succumbed to death in the incident,” she added, saying preventive measures are not taken.
In many rape cases in India, perpetrators have not been held accountable. In 2002, Bano was raped by 11 men, who were sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2022, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi authorised the release of the men, who were greeted with applause and garlands upon their release.
However, their remission was overruled and the Supreme Court sent the rapists back to jail after public outcry.
Grover believes that the death penalty will not deter rapists until India addresses the deeply entrenched problem of sexual violence. “For any change, India as a society will have to confront and challenge, patriarchy, discrimination and inequality that is embedded in our homes, families, cultural practices, social norms and religious traditions”.
What makes this case particularly prominent is that it happened in Kolkata, Sandip Roy, a freelance contributor to NPR, told Al Jazeera. “Kolkata actually prided itself for a long time on being really low in the case of violence against women and being relatively safe for women.”
A National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report said that Kolkata had the lowest number of rape cases in 2021 among 19 metropolitan cities, with 11 cases in the whole year. In comparison, New Delhi was reported to have recorded 1, 226 cases that year.
Prime Minister Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called for dismissing the government in West Bengal, where Kolkata is located, led by Mamata Banerjee of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). Banerjee’s party is part of the opposition alliance.
Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in parliament, also called for justice for the victim.
“The attempt to save the accused instead of providing justice to the victim raises serious questions on the hospital and the local administration,” he posted on X on Wednesday.
Roy spoke about the politicisation of the case since an opposition party governs West Bengal. “The local government’s opposition will try to make this an issue of women’s safety in the state,” he said.
Have doctors in India protested before?
Roy explained to Al Jazeera that this case is an overlap of two kinds of violence, the violence against a woman, as well as violence against “an overworked medical professional”.
Doctors in India do not have sufficient workplace security, and attacks on doctors have started protests in India before.
In 2019, two junior doctors were physically assaulted in Kolkata’s Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital (NRSMCH) by a mob of people after a 75-year-old patient passed away in the hospital.
Those attacks set off doctors’ protests in Kolkata, and senior doctors in West Bengal offered to resign from their positions to express solidarity with the junior doctors who were attacked.
More than 75 percent of Indian doctors have faced some form of violence, according to a survey by the Indian Medical Association in 2015.
What happens next?
The case will now be handled by the CBI, which sent a team to the hospital premises to inspect the crime scene on Wednesday morning, local media reported.
According to Indian law, the investigation into a case of rape or gang rape is to be completed within two months from the date of lodging of the First Information Report (police complaint), according to Grover, the lawyer.
The highest court in West Bengal, which transferred the case from the local police to the CBI on Tuesday, has directed the central investigating agency to file periodic status reports regarding the progress of the investigation.
The FIR was filed on August 9, which means the investigation is expected to be completed by October 9.
Bengal women will create history with a night long protest in various major locations in the state for at 11.55pm on 14th of August’24,the night that’ll mark our 78th year as an independent country.
The campaign, 'Women, Reclaim the Night: The Night is Ours', is aimed at seeking… pic.twitter.com/Si9fd6YGNb
— purpleready (@epicnephrin_e) August 13, 2024
