Activists and doctors across India plan to march on Wednesday night to demand justice for a doctor who was raped and murdered while on duty at a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.
Protests titled “Reclaim the Night” are expected in West Bengal, Delhi, Karnataka, Odisha, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, among other states, according to a Kolkata-based protest organizer.
This comes after two days of nationwide protests by doctors following the incident at RG Kar Medical College in the West Bengal capital. “The sit-in demonstrations and agitation on the hospital campus will continue,” one of the protesting doctors, identified as Dr Mridul, told Al Jazeera.
Services at some medical centers were suspended indefinitely, and marches and vigils shed light on issues of sexual violence as well as the safety of doctors in the world's most populous nation.
What happened to the doctor in Calcutta?
The body of a 31-year-old junior doctor with multiple injuries was found on August 9 at a government teaching hospital in Kolkata.
Hospital authorities initially informed the victim’s parents that “their daughter had committed suicide,” lawyer and women’s rights activist Vrinda Grover told Al Jazeera. However, an autopsy confirmed that the victim was raped and murdered.
Grover has represented victims of sexual violence in India in the past, including Bilkis Bano, a Muslim woman who was gang-raped during the Gujarat riots in 2002, 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 Calcutta High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The Federation of Resident Doctors' Associations (FORDA) has called for elective services in hospitals to be suspended nationwide from Monday. Elective services are medical treatments that can be postponed or are not considered medically necessary.
On Tuesday, FORDA announced on its X account that it would call off the strike after Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda accepted the protest demands.
One of these demands was to consolidate the Central Protection Act, intended to be a central law to protect medical professionals from violence, which was proposed in the lower house of Parliament in 2022 but has not yet been enacted.
FORDA said the Ministry would begin work on the Act within 15 days of the press release, and a written statement from the Ministry was expected to be published soon.
Press release on the call for a strike.
In our struggle over the sad incident at RG Kar, the demands we raised have been fully met by the @JPNaddaOffice with concrete measures and not just verbal guarantees.
Ratification of the Central Health Protection Act… image.twitter.com/OXdSZgM1Jc
— FORDA INDIA (@FordaIndia) August 13, 2024
Why are some Indian doctors still protesting?
However, other doctors' and hospitals' federations have said they will not back down from the strike until a concrete solution is found, including a central law to curb attacks on doctors.
Among those who continued to strike were the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA), the Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the Indira Gandhi Hospital, local media reported.
Ragunandan Dixit, general secretary of the Resident Doctors Association of AIIMS, said the indefinite strike will continue till their demands, including a written assurance on the implementation of the Central Protection Act, are met.
Medical professionals in India want a central law that would make violence against doctors a punishable and non-bailable offence, in the hope that it would deter such violent crimes against doctors in the future.
The protesters are also demanding the dismissal of the university director, who has been transferred. “We demand his dismissal, not just his transfer,” Dr Abdul Waqim Khan, one of the protesting doctors, told ANI news agency. “We also demand the death penalty for the criminal,” he added.
“Call off the strike now would mean that the resident doctors may never get justice,” Dr Dhruv Chauhan, a member of the Junior Doctors Network of the National Council of the Indian Medical Association, told local news agency Press Trust of India (PTI).
In which states of India did doctors protest?
Although the protests began in Kolkata, West Bengal, on Monday, they spread across the country on Tuesday.
The capital New Delhi, Union Territory Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow and Prayagraj city, Bihar capital Patna and southern state Goa also saw protests by doctors.
Who is the suspect in the Kolkata rape case?
Local media reported that police arrested suspect Sanjoy Roy, a civic volunteer who frequently visited the hospital. He has unrestricted access to the ward and police found compelling evidence against him.
The victim's parents told the court they suspect it was a case of gang rape, local media reported.
Why is sexual violence increasing in India?
Sexual violence is widespread in India, with an average of 90 rapes reported every day in 2022.
Laws against sexual violence were tightened 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 sparked nationwide protests.
But despite new laws, “the rate of sexual violence in India continues to rise unabated,” Grover said.
He added that in his experience, most workplaces pay little attention to diligent and rigorous enforcement of laws.
“It is unfortunate that the government and institutions respond only after the woman has already suffered sexual assault and has often succumbed to death in the incident,” she added, saying that no preventive measures are taken.
In many rape cases in India, the perpetrators have not been held accountable. In 2002, Bano was raped by 11 men, who were sentenced to life in prison. In 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government authorized the release of the men, who were greeted with applause and garlands upon their release.
However, his remission was overturned 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 deep-rooted problem of sexual violence. “For any change to happen, India as a society will have to confront and challenge the patriarchy, discrimination and inequality that are embedded in our homes, families, cultural practices, social norms and religious traditions.”
What makes this case particularly noteworthy is that it happened in Kolkata, NPR freelancer Sandip Roy told Al Jazeera. “Kolkata has long prided itself on having very few cases of violence against women and being relatively safe for women.”
According to a report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Kolkata recorded the lowest number of rape cases in 2021 among 19 metropolitan cities, with 11 cases in the entire year. In comparison, New Delhi was reported to have recorded 1,226 cases that year.
Prime Minister Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called for the dismissal of the West Bengal government, where Kolkata is based, headed by Mamata Banerjee of the 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 for the hospital and the local administration,” X posted on Wednesday.
Roy spoke about the politicisation of the case as an opposition party rules West Bengal. “The opposition in the local government will try to turn this into an issue of women’s safety in the state,” she said.
Have doctors in India protested before?
Roy explained to Al Jazeera that this case is an overlap of two types of violence, violence against a woman, as well as violence against “an overworked medical professional”.
Doctors in India do not have sufficient security in their workplaces and attacks on doctors have sparked protests in the country before.
In 2019, two junior doctors were physically assaulted at Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital (NRSMCH) in Kolkata by a mob after a 75-year-old patient died at the hospital.
The attacks sparked protests by doctors in Kolkata, and senior doctors in West Bengal offered to resign from their posts to express solidarity with the junior doctors who were attacked.
More than 75 percent of Indian doctors have experienced some form of violence, according to a survey conducted 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.
Under Indian law, the investigation into a rape or gang rape case must be completed within two months from the date of filing of the first information report (police complaint), according to Grover, the lawyer.
West Bengal's highest court, which transferred the case from the local police to the CBI on Tuesday, has directed the central investigative agency to submit regular reports on the progress of the probe.
The FIR was filed on August 9, which means the investigation is expected to be concluded on October 9.
The women of Bengal will create history with an all-night protest at various important locations across the state at 11:55 pm on August 14, 2024, the night that will mark our 78th anniversary as an independent country.
The campaign 'Women, we reclaim the night: the night is ours' aims to seek… image.twitter.com/Si9fd6YGNb
— PurpleReady (@epicnephrin_e) August 13, 2024
