The cynicism of the average Indian is often perceived with disdain. Yet, time and time again, the apathy of the state makes us hang our head in shame and disgust. There is a time difference of more than a decade between the untimely death of two bravehearts – Nirbhaya and Dr Moumita Debnath, two ordinary women who dared to dream but had their dreams crushed by monsters in the guise of men. In 2013, Delhi was the epicentre of the heinous crime, it is Kolkata now. The only, and the big, difference between then and now is that in Kolkata the state abetted and aided the perpetrators to rape and kill.
Shocking facts are emerging almost every day. One of the West Bengal’s premier medical colleges, RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, had become a den of racketeering, medical malpractices, flesh trade, gambling etc under the leadership of the now-removed principal Dr Sandip Ghosh. As we get to know more details, it becomes very clear that the former Principal is a blot on the medical profession.
The victim, a promising junior doctor, was shocked to see the goings-on in the campus. Not wanting to compromise with her moral values, she didn’t want to continue working there, and this, she had confided with her parents as well. West Bengal is notorious for having government employees who have sold their spines to the ruling party, a few like Dr Debnath are an exception. She was repeatedly told to compromise with the existing circumstances but she couldn’t. When the criminals realised that she couldn’t be cowered down, they decided silence her, permanently.
We all need to raise our voices at the transgressions that are now a rule in West Bengal. This incident is yet another proof of the falling standards of women’s safety in the state. Before Mamata Banerjee assumed office, West Bengal had one of the best records in India when it came to Women’s safety. But evcer since the situation has been deteriorating. The Park Street Rape Case followed by the Nun Rape Case in Ranaghat and the Kamduni Rape and Murder Case are enough reminders that women should step out of their homes at their own risk; that the state has no role in ensuring their safety. In fact, the Chief Advisor to the Chief Minister Alapan Bandopadhyay had clearly stated that women should avoid working at night to keep safe. Bandopadhyay is a former Chief Secretary whose post-retirement benefits were stopped as disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him for abstaining from a review meeting taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his visit to West Bengal in the aftermath of Cyclone Amphan. The other jewel in the CM’s crown is the Commissioner of Police, Kolkata, Vineet Goyal (IPS), who instead of making every effort to nab the killers of Dr Debnath lost his temper at journalists who were asking questions, and also ensured that the police force remained a mute witness when a gang of criminals associated with the ruling party entered RG Kar Medical College and vandalised the crime scene in a bid to permanently destroy the evidence. Ruling party MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and the victim’s mother have demanded custodial investigation of the Police Commissioner over this. Mamata’s men in uniform have reacted rather predictably by issuing summons to Roy.
The perpetrators in the Kamduni Rape and Murder Case were recently acquitted by the Calcutta High Court due to the weak case presented against them by the State CID whose then IG incidentally was Vineet Goyal. The Kolkata Police, despite the discovery of the junior doctor’s half-naked body in the college Seminar Room, made a desperate attempt to project the horrific event as a suicide. However, a subsequent autopsy revealed that she had been raped by more than one person, and murdered brutally. The autopsy report revealed as many as 16 external and nine internal injury marks, death due to manual strangulation and smothering, and forceful penetration.
Now, instead of initiating disciplinary action against Dr Ghosh, the state health department has transferred him to the prestigious Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital. Incidentally, Benerjee also holds the Health portfolio in the state government. Several of Ghosh’s former colleagues have spoken against the corrupt system of commission that he had established at the RG Kar Medical College; they even cast aspersions over his career progression, hinting at his political connections.
The perpetrators of this brutal crime, whose names are now very much in the public domain, have not yet been officially named by the government due to fears of upsetting the ruling party’s vote bank – three out of the four belong to the minority community. The only arrest made so far has been that of a temporary civic volunteer, a proverbial sacrificial goat. Now, the case has been handed over to the CBI. And the junior doctors, joined in by people from all walks of life, are protesting at this barbarity and medievalism unleashed on the helpless people of West Bengal. No human being, let alone a doctor, deserves this fate for doing God’s work but then West Bengal has been rendered Godless first by the Communists and now by their able students, the Trinamool Congress. The land of Shakti yearns for a dawn that must come to avenge the humiliation heaped on her daughters before it reaches the point of no return. It is time our daughters draw a Lakshman Rekha of thus far and no further, a line etched in stone that no power can dare breach!
