Â鶹´«Ã½

Skip to main content

Protests sweep India over rape and murder of doctor

Share
KOLKATA, India -

Holding candles, hundreds of thousands of women marched through the night in cities across India, to protest the brutal rape and murder of a young female doctor in a hospital that has fueled anger over a lack of safety for women despite tough new laws.

A 31-year old trainee doctor was raped and murdered inside the medical college in Kolkata where she worked on Friday, triggering nationwide protests among doctors and drawing parallels to the notorious gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012.

"We have come here to demand justice because even I have a daughter. I am scared to send her anywhere...I am scared to send my daughter to study," said Rinky Ghosh, who took part in a protest in Kolkata. "So I am here today because something ... must be done, this injustice must stop."

The doctor had retired to sleep on a piece of carpet in a seminar room in the R G Kar Medical College after a marathon 36-hour shift, given the lack of any dorms or resting rooms for doctors in the premises, her colleagues told Reuters.

She was found dead on Friday. Police said she had been raped and murdered and a police volunteer was subsequently arrested in connection with the crime.

Many government hospitals in cities across India suspended all services except emergency departments earlier this week, as junior doctors sat outside in protest, demanding justice.

The victim was found bleeding from her eyes and mouth, with injuries to her legs, stomach, ankles, her right hand and finger, a doctor's inquest report Aug. 9 and accessed by Reuters said.

In protests called "Reclaim the Night," women marched across several Indian cities from midnight on Wednesday, on the eve of the country's 78th Independence Day, to protest against the lack of safety for women in India, especially at night.

"As a society, we have to think about the atrocities being committed against our mothers, daughters and sisters. There is outrage against this in the country. I can feel this outrage," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an Independence Day address to the nation on Thursday.

The 2012 Delhi rape case was seen as a turning point in attitudes towards women's safety in Indian society. It triggered huge protests and was the catalyst for rapid change in laws tackling crimes against women.

These included fast-track courts for swifter convictions in such cases, but protesters say a decade on, the situation for women has not improved.

"This horrific incident has once again reminded us that women disproportionately bear the weight of ensuring their own safety," Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt said in a post on her Instagram page, which has more than 85 million followers.

Doctors in India's crowded and often squalid government hospitals have long complained of being overworked and underpaid, and say not enough is done to curb violence leveled at them by people angered over the medical care on offer.

Crimes against women in India rose four per cent in 2022 from the previous year, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), released late last year, showed.

(Reporting by Subrata Nag Choudhary, writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Ros Russell)

CTVNews.ca Top Stories

For decades, Melven Jones couldn’t talk about what happened to him as a child. He didn’t even remember it.

The CEO of the Ottawa Mission is responding to controversial comments made this week by Premier Doug Ford about those living in homeless encampments that received swift blowback from advocates.

A strike by grain terminal workers at the Port of Metro Vancouver has ended, their employer announced Friday night.

Local Spotlight

A tale about a taxicab hauling gold and sinking through the ice on Larder Lake, Ont., in December 1937 has captivated a man from that town for decades.

When a group of B.C. filmmakers set out on a small fishing boat near Powell River last week, they hoped to capture some video for a documentary on humpback whales. What happened next blew their minds.

A pizza chain in Edmonton claims to have the world's largest deliverable pizza.

Sarah McLachlan is returning to her hometown of Halifax in November.

Wayne MacKay is still playing basketball twice at Mount Allison University at 87 years old.

A man from a small rural Alberta town is making music that makes people laugh.

An Indigenous artist has a buyer-beware warning ahead of Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Police are looking to the public for help after thieves broke into a Lethbridge ice creamery, stealing from the store.

An ordinary day on the job delivering mail in East Elmwood quickly turned dramatic for Canada Post letter carrier Jared Plourde. A woman on his route was calling out in distress.