The Kolkata hospital rape and murder shocker has once again shaken the nation’s conscience. There are multiple reports and incidents related to crime against women that have become talking points all over the country. In the Ajmer sex scandal, six of the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment after thirty-two years of legal battle. In Moradabad of Uttar Pradesh, a doctor was arrested for allegedly raping a 20-year-old Dalit nurse. The Badalapur incident of Maharashtra near Thane, where a cleaner sexually abused kindergarten-going girls, resulted in a massive protest. The Hema Committee report on the Malayalam film industry has concluded that many women endure distressing working conditions and harassment without recourse to justice. These alarming incidents should be distressing for every concerned individual, especially in a country where feminine divinity is celebrated. Still, the outrage and focus on Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital rape and murder have multiple systemic dimensions which demands thorough investigation.
The sequence of events in the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the Kolkata Hospital is problematic on every count. When the body was found in one of the seminar rooms of the college cum hospital, it was cooked up as a suicide case. The renovation continued on the premises after the crime. The FIR was registered almost twelve hours after the autopsy and cremation of the body. The incident occurred on August 9, but it became national news only after August 14, when the protest erupted. The Principal, facing various allegations of corruption and irregularities, decided to step down, but he was immediately appointed Principal of another college. On August 15, some people vandalised the crime scene, as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was supposed to take over the case the next day. Allegedly, CCTV footage related to the crime had been destroyed, further eroding the credibility of the investigation process.
After the nationwide protests and strikes by the resident doctors association, the Supreme Court has decided to take suomoto cognisance of the incident, bringing the issue of workplace safety and security of women to the centre stage. The trial will continue, but will it resolve the systemic problems and socio-cultural malaise? Will it be another Nirbhaya case where everything will return to square one after making political points? Why do such crimes against women occur in a civilised society, from Sandeshkhali to RG Kar Medical College and Hospital? Is it possible without political patronage to criminals? Why are crimes against women normalised so quickly in a State led by a female Chief Minister? How did the Mamata Banerjee-led Government, known for opposing even entry of central agencies into the State, decide to hand over the investigation to the CBI? Was vandalisation of the crime scene, handing over the case to CBI and then leading the protest by CM part of the game plan? Why was police machinery a hand-in-glove in this cover-up? Was the victim aware of something fishy in the hospital that the administration wanted to hide? How could the prime accused, a volunteer with the disaster management group of Kolkata police, manage to get all kinds of favours, including posting at the police outpost at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital? These and many questions are unanswered. If all this was not enough, people writing or posting about these lapses were served with legal notices by the TMC Government. The politicisation of the entire State machinery, nurturing of vested interests in all departments and any attempt to expose them responded with State repression are the prime reasons for the outrage against this incident, besides the horrific nature of the crime.
No political whataboutery will help; an impartial and thorough investigation can. The evils like addiction to various drugs, alcohol and pornographic content are common threads in most of such crimes. We need to address them as societal problems. We need to restore the place of women as equal partners in national reconstruction, which we philosophically and spiritually believed in our culture and envisaged by great thinkers like Swami Vivekananda. This cultural conviction and practice should be inculcated as a value from childhood. We should strive to make it a national movement, starting from families and educational institutions to workplace induction and political representation – only then will we be able to deal with this menace against humanity.
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