On 9 August 2024, a 31-year old female postgraduate trainee doctor was found raped and murdered in the seminar room of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The entire nation was overcome with a sense of disgust, shame and anger, with one of the interviewees, from Delhi, India describing a sense of unsafety when leaving their house. With minimal progress on the case, doctors and citizens nationwide took to the streets to protest state and judicial inaction.
Despite the brutalised condition in which her body was found, the College initially informed the victim’s family that she had died by suicide and the First Information Report (FIR) was not filed until fourteen hours after the discovery. A case for unnatural death was registered only following the autopsy report, later being changed to a case of rape and murder. This subsequently led to the arrest of 33-year old civic volunteer, Sanjay Roy as the prime suspect in the case. In a recent development, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which now handles the case, submitted a charge sheet against Roy stating that he acted alone and went into the seminar room when the doctor was asleep. This development comes after a CBI report, that was shared with the Supreme Court (SC) of India on 17 September, which noted evidence tampering, financial irregularities, delay in registering the case, and the victim’s parents claiming police negligence and misconduct. “The only reason that we have a CBI report at the moment is due to the amount of media coverage that this case got. Now that this case is not being discussed as widely as it was, the court proceedings will stall and possibly take years”, said one of the interviewees to The Badger staff.
Role of Media sensationalisation
In relation to media coverage of the case, a student from Delhi University (DU), India, said, “The certain level of professionalism that comes with journalism was absent from this case.” They further added, the right to privacy that comes with any sort of case was immediately taken from the victim and her family, with her photos and gruesome details uncovered from the autopsy being detailed publicly. “There has been a culture of victim blaming in Indian media, that was apparent in the way the headlines were framed.” Her presence in the seminar room following a 36-hour work shift was questioned and became a topic of discussion on online forums, with the former principal of the Medical college saying, “No girl should be around the seminar room alone at night.”
“While the case is inherently sensational, it feels very indicative of what our society is like, what we let happen and what we continue to let happen because of the way our judicial system handles them,” said a student from Brighton University. Furthermore, the aspects of a case that the media highlights shape the public’s initial perception and influences how the case is discussed within society.
The debates and discussions on popular news channels morphed into an ugly blame-game between political parties, with neither of them acknowledging their own hypocrisy in the discussion. This case, like most criminal cases in the country, turned into a political pawn for parties to sway voters to their side for any upcoming elections. In an absurd media stunt, Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, India, held a protest march to demand justice for the victim, while being the person in-charge of the state and later ignoring cases of state-enforced police brutality on peaceful protesters.
Comments on the victim’s appearance and body became prevalent in online circles which consider offensive humour to be “cool” or “trendy”. There are two groups of people involved when cases of sexual assault come forward, the ones who are convicted of the crime and those who enable them. It appears as though major sectors of the society and its stakeholders tend to fall into the second category.
Widespread comparisons between this and the 2012 Delhi gang rape case of Nirbhaya were seen across social media, with people ignorantly calling this, ‘Nirbhaya 2.0’, despite these being two different cases that happened in two different times and to different people. ASussex alumni told The Badger, “It is perhaps natural to be reminded of something that’s now a decade past, when the nationwide impact of it feels and looks similar. However, it is dangerous to club two women or victims together; because, then that’s all they become: a reference point for something dangerous to happen, yet again, in the future.”
Solidarity in Protest
Enraged by the initial mishandling of the case, the Federation of Resident Doctors Association called for a nationwide strike and halt for selective services on 12 August. This was followed by a nationwide movement of night marches as an act of solidarity and defiance to the rules placed on women under the guise of safety. The ‘Reclaim the Night’ marches saw people from all walks of life marching at midnight to honour the memory of the victim and many others who came before and after her. The marches became a symbol of solidarity and support present within the wider community and are in direct opposition to the sensualisation, as claimed by one of the interviewees. The student from DU called the march an incredibly emotional experience, and recalled their own experience organising student demonstrations for the cause, saying that the organisation was easy as this was a grassroots movement, making it hard for political parties to co-opt the movement. They further added, while police intervention was low in the above mentioned demonstrations, most cases of police brutality seen in many other protests were not covered by the media or framed in a way that made the protesters sound violent.
Credit: The Wire
As of writing this article, the protesting junior doctors in Kolkata have begun an indefinite hunger strike and have called for a nationwide hunger strike on 9 October, which marks two months since the doctor was found dead. This recent action comes after a 42-day long protest that ended on 21 September following initial discussions with the West Bengal government. Among other demands, the doctors emphasised getting justice for the deceased medic, removal of Health secretary NS Nigam as well as accountability for alleged incompetence, establishment of a centralised referral system for all hospitals and medical colleges, implementation of bed vacancy monitoring system, ensuring provisions for CCTV, on-call rooms and washrooms at their workplaces.
Indefinite hunger strike by doctors in West Bengal, India
Credit: The Economic Times
Who has the right to protest?
At one of the ‘Reclaim the Night’ protests, on the eve of the 77th Indian Independence day, organised by residents of Hiranandani Gardens located in the upscale Powai area of Mumbai, denied entry to people from recently demolished Jai Bhim Nagar slums. Their show of solidarity was not welcomed by the community with some stating, “Your issues are different from those raised here” and “This is an exclusive protest only for residents of Hiranandani complex.” This supposedly open protest, organised as a demonstration of solidarity, showed hostility towards women who understand the danger of insecure living situations and threat of sexual assault. The Jai Bhim Nagar slums that were demolished on 6 June left nearly 650 families homeless with some returning to their native villages, some settling in nearby slums and some being forced to live on the streets. In hopes to bridge the very obvious caste and class divides and in a show of solidarity, the women went to the open protest which was organised in a public space. Reporting to The Wire, one of the protest goers claimed that it made them feel as though only one kind of woman and her safety mattered and that their (the women from the slums) safety was not seen as a gender issue by them. This kind of class disparity is apparent in everyday Indian society, and this gap becomes only more pronounced when it comes to fundamental rights like women’s safety. “The only fault of the women of Jai Bhim Nagar was possibly that they understood solidarity in its true essence; they were also women and they knew the feeling of constantly remaining in the fear of sexual violence and so they thought they belonged,” said a former Sussex Alumni when asked about this incident.
Women of Jai Bhim Nagar. Credit: The Wire
There is a clear lack of understanding intersectionality within the general public and the ways in which different institutional systems oppress people. Coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 to address the marginalisation of Black women within anti-discrimination law, feminist theory, antiracist theory and politics, intersectionality is used to describe how systems of oppression overlap and create distinct experiences for people with multiple identities. In ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color’, Crenshaw states, “Intersectional subordination need not be intentionally produced; in fact, it is frequently the consequence of imposition of one burden that interacts with pre existing vulnerabilities to create yet another dimension of disempowerment.” As per Human Rights Watch, Dalit Women (women belonging to lower caste groups) are at the bottom in our community, where Dalit issues are considered important by the women’s movement and Dalit movements tend to ignore women, something that can be seen in the treatment of women from Jai Bhim Nagar. Noting this disparity, another Sussex Alumni said, “This is a classic case of how women from historically oppressed caste backgrounds were identified from their caste identity rather than solely their gender identity. Similarly, when it comes to supporting Bilkis Bano, many of the elitist feminists who want equality in the corporate world became silent because the religious identification of Bilkis Bano was in question in that context.” He further added, “Inequalities in terms of class, caste, gender and religion are deeply rooted in our society, and these power relations are often reflected very explicitly in such cases.”
It is ironic that for what is considered to be a collectivist culture where family and community is widely prioritised, we become awfully individualistic when it comes to basic rights. This kind of attitude not only impairs any form of liberation movement but also takes away attention from institutional systems of oppression that impact our lives in different ways. When discussing this with one of the interviewees, we came to realise one of the only reasons that this case got this level of coverage was because the victim was a trainee doctor from a major city in the country. We wondered whether this same level of outrage would be present from someone in the same hospital who happened to have a less “reputable” profession such as a cleaner, and would I be writing this article had there been no outrage?
Women’s safety and India
Growing up, the idea of women’s safety has never been an alien concept. The long list of rules and regulations that were taught to us from a young age to keep ourselves safe are deeply in-grained in my mind to this day. Despite all of this there are people who call incidents like what happened at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, one-off incidents and call the protests an over-reaction. Reflecting on this, the student from DU called these people hypocritical, “There wouldn’t be so many laws regarding women’s safety if these were one off incidents. This is just the one that came to light. There are countless incidents that happen on a daily basis that tend to go unreported or unnoticed by the wider public.” In a recent affidavit to the SC, the Central Government of India, opposed the criminalisation of marital rape, stating that, while the husband has no “fundamental right”, to violate his wife’s consent, “such violations within marriage differ from those outside it”. What should one do when the “violation” that the central government talks about comes from a person that you know and you are meant to trust? Do the several rules that are imposed on women and girls since birth ‘for their own safety’, work in this case? This culture of not acknowledging the root of the problem and rectifying the societal mindset is what enables crimes of this heinous scale, creating a void in terms of women’s safety. In response to the question about women’s safety, a former Sussex Alumni said, “It is this very patriarchal attitude that’s one of the factors leading towards unsafe public spaces for women in India. All we can do is keep confronting such behaviour whenever we witness it in our best capacity. A friend once told me that our moral contribution towards a just society would be one of our significant contributions to society.”
A Durga Puja installation in memory of the victim of R.G Kar brutality case
Credit: The Wire
As previously mentioned, 9 October marks two months since the discovery of the medic’s body, and the beginning of Durga Puja, a festival meant to celebrate the victory of good over evil and the goddess Durga. Being raised in a Bengali household, this has been a huge part of my life, something that I have been missing since I moved to the UK for my studies. But amidst everything that is happening right now, and has been going on for years, is it right to welcome our goddess and celebrate her? In the stories told about her, the monster is a demon, but in this case, isn’t evil embedded within the very society we live in? Can we truly celebrate the victory of good over evil at all?