Protests following the murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata are facing interference of the state government and a women’s movement split by social divisions, reports Vedika Dawar

Towards midnight 14 August 1947, the eve of India’s independence, Jawaharlal Nehru delivered an inaugural speech as the first prime minister of the country. The commencing words of the speech, ‘At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom …’  beckoned the future of the country with a pledge to ‘build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman’.

At the stroke of midnight hour of 14 August 2024, 77 years later, the streets of Kolkata, India erupted with protests condemning the brutal rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor at a state-run hospital. The irony of a nationwide protest questioning those very institutions that pledged to provide every man and woman justice, is self-evident.

Violence against women is not rare in India. An annual crime report published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) disclosed a number of 4,45,256 cases of crime against women in India, amounting to 51 First Information Reports an hour, in the year 2022. Rape comprises 7.1% of that number, the rest being composed of cruelty by spouses or their relatives, kidnapping and abduction, and assault.

It is important to acknowledge that the movements concerning the staggering amount of violence against women have been diverse in their approach against such crimes, their demands, and approach to seeking justice. The diverse social collective of Indian women is spread across caste, race, colour, religion, and language. These factors make the Indian Women’s Movement stand outside the frameworks set forth by international feminist movements.

The Kolkata case appears to have generated a widespread public response. Protesters marched in the pouring rain, under slogans like ‘Reclaim the Night’ and ‘meyera, raat dokhol koro’ (girls, take control of the night). Resident Doctors’ Associations (RDAs) from Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital announced an eleven-day strike, however this was called off last week following an appeal from the Supreme Court.

Mamata Banerjee, who is both the home minister and the health minister of the State of Bengal, and her government are being held accountable for critical questions regarding the circumstances leading up to the crime and subsequent events by nationwide protests and doctors’ strikes. The incident has underlined the ‘absolute failure of the state’s machinery’ as described by the Calcutta High Court.

Despite the body of the doctor being found with an uncovered lower body, legs spread ninety degrees apart and eleven external wounds, the police at first asked the family of the victim to the hospital due to her ‘sudden illness’ and, later, reported her death as by suicide. Following that, the doctor’s family was made to wait for hours and beg the police to let them see their child’s body. 

Government obstruction

The findings, after the case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Intelligence, brought forth further suspicion in the attempts to cover up the crime. Barely two days after the incident, demolition of a restroom close to the crime scene was initiated as part of a renovation. Evidence was further tampered with due to a violent mob attack at the protest site of the RG Kar Hospital. On the eve of Independence Day, women protesting against violence were faced with even more violence, and the police were of no help in stopping it.

The primary suspect, Sanjay Roy, also a traffic police volunteer, had open access to the hospital at all times of the night and day. Subsequently, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government has come under intense scrutiny by the opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the public. The TMC is being asked to take account of the corruption in the state-run hospital and law enforcement agencies alongside suspected links with the violent mob attack at the site of the ‘Reclaim the Night’ protest.

However, the Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee blamed the ‘Ram-Bam-Shyam’ opposition parties for the fracas. Notices were issued to 280 people along with a few being arrested in an attempt to coerce and intimidate protesters, doctors, journalists, critics and voices on social media. These measures have been condemned by the Supreme Court of India, which has ordered that peaceful protests not be disrupted by the state government, the politicisation of the incident be stopped and that the ‘law take its course’.

With an investigation underway, the TMC government has announced a list of measures initiating resting spaces for women with attached toilets, night patrols in colleges and mobile apps that link alarms to nearby police stations. However, certain measures have been criticised as patriarchal and counterproductive. For instance, a woman’s working hours at a hospital are to be restricted to a maximum of twelve hours a day and hospitals are to avoid assigning night shifts to women. Measures like these highlight the inherent inequalities and societal barriers that Indian women are faced with in our fight for the right to be safe and equal in the workforce.

The women of the country awaiting justice have now been faced with a horrific number of 900 reported cases of rape since the incident of the Kolkata rape-murder case on the 9 August. While protests for the murder of the trainee doctor have caught national and international attention, scattered movements awaiting justice for various other cases are taking place across the country. However, the country lacks a unified women’s movement. The protests’ group-based framework mean that they organise themselves within occupational, caste and class confines. This raises a persistent question: How do we fight for bodily autonomy within a system that views women as a part of a communal whole?