Killing of female doctor in India and wave of protests; what has happened so far

The tragic death of a young Indian doctor at a medical centre has sparked a wave of protests in the country. It is the latest such case in a country that has recorded more than 31,000 cases of rape since 2022 alone.

Protests peaked last weekend, with doctors across India stopping work for 24 hours and refusing to treat patients except in emergencies. In recent days, tens of thousands of people have also demonstrated on the streets of the country, demanding justice for the 31-year-old victim and protecting women’s safety in the workplace.

What has happened so far

The story began on August 8 at the RJ Kar Medical College Government Hospital in Kolkata. Ghorbani, a second-year student at the university’s medical college, was on night duty at the hospital’s pulmonary department.

Just after midnight, he and his colleagues finished dinner and decided to take a nap in the faculty seminar room. The next day, his half-naked body was found lying on a bloodstained mattress with signs of injuries.

Soon after the report was made, the police began investigating. The autopsy report showed that the victim had been sexually abused.

At the crime scene, police collected a Bluetooth headset as possible evidence. There were no CCTV cameras at the scene of the incident and police referred to other cameras at the hospital during their investigation to compile a list of people who had been in the area during that time.

One of them, Sanjay Roy, was found walking around the building with Bluetooth headphones around his neck at around 4 a.m. CCTV footage showed that when Sanjay Roy left the hospital 40 minutes later, he was no longer wearing the headphones.

After the investigation, the police summoned all the suspects, including Sanjay Roy, and after interrogation, they tried to connect each suspect’s mobile phone with the Bluetooth headset found at the scene, and found that the headset immediately connected to the mobile phone. Roy’s companion was connected, so he was immediately arrested. He later confessed to the crime.

People and activists are disappointed with the rulers’ repeated promises

“People are very angry,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his first public response to the incident. He also asked the country’s institutions to take crimes against women seriously and investigate them with greater priority.

But Mr Modi’s words, like the incident itself, have been repeated. He made similar remarks 12 years ago after he gang-raped a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi.

Protests following the traumatic incident led to tougher laws, and seven years later the four defendants were hanged as hundreds of people celebrated and stomped their feet in front of the prison.

But not much has changed since then. Many Indian women still distrust the police and the judicial system, and complaints from victims, especially from the lower classes of society, have gone unresolved for years, with some suspects released on bail.

Female doctors in India are particularly at risk. In addition to the problems faced by women in Indian society, they witness violence at work just as their male colleagues do, and there are frequent reports of relatives of patients attacking medical staff, especially after a patient has died.

Official statistics show a new case of rape is registered in India every 15 minutes, but women’s rights activists in the country stress the real figure is likely much higher.

India’s health ministry pledged to set up a new committee to adopt safety measures for the country’s medical workers and asked protesters to return to hospitals.

However, the Indian Medical Association and other protesters on the streets were unconvinced, stressing that similar committees in the past had made little progress.