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28-08-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ KOLKATA: Police in India fired tear gas and water cannon on Tuesday (Jan 27) as they clashed with thousands of protesters seeking justice for a doctor who was raped and murdered in Kolkata this month.
The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied body at a state-run hospital in the eastern city stoked nationwide anger at the chronic issue of violence against women.
Tuesday’s demonstration saw thousands march to a government building in Kolkata to demand the resignation of Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal state.
They shouted slogans and clashed with police, who charged the crowd with batons in an effort to disperse it.
Namita Ghosh, a college student who attended the protest, told media that the crowd had intended to “protest peacefully” before the baton charge.
At least 100 protesters “have been arrested on the charge of creating violence”, a senior police official told media on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Numerous protests in Kolkata prompted by the crime have transformed into unruly political rallies, with police scuffling with demonstrators from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) angry at the state government.
The Hindu-nationalist BJP is the party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but it is an opposition party in West Bengal, of which Kolkata is the capital.
They have accused Banerjee’s government of creating an unsafe environment for women that allowed crimes including the doctor’s murder to occur.
The woman’s body was found in the teaching hospital’s seminar hall, suggesting she had gone there for a break during a 36-hour shift.
Doctors’ associations in many cities launched strikes over the murder that cut off non-essential services, though medical professionals have since returned to work.
One man has been detained over the crime.
The gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus.
That incident sparked widespread outrage in a country where sexual violence against women is endemic, with an average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022 in the country of 1.4 billion people.
Junior doctors have refused to see non-emergency patients in many parts of the country since the incident at Kolkata’s state-run R.G. Kar Medical College, as they launched protests demanding justice for the victim and greater safety for women at hospitals. India’s Supreme Court has created a hospital safety task force and has requested protesting doctors return to work, but some have refused to budge, including in West Bengal, of which Kolkata is the capital.
On Tuesday, more than 5,000 policemen were deployed in Kolkata and the neighboring city of Howrah, a senior officer said, as the protests led by some university students took off, demanding the resignation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Kunal Ghosh, a spokesperson for Banerjee’s ruling Trinamool Congress Party, blamed the police crackdown on “lawlessness” created by workers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which is the main opposition party the state, as well as groups affiliated to it.
The BJP has extended its support to the protesting students, while senior state leader Suvendu Adhikari told reporters that Banerjee’s administration was trying to suppress the rape and murder incident, a charge the state government has denied.
