India’s supreme court severely criticised the authorities in West Bengal on Tuesday over their handling of the rape and murder of a trainee medic at a government hospital in the state’s capital, Kolkata, a crime it declared had “shocked the nation’s conscience” and triggered nationwide protests by doctors.
The 31-year-old intern’s mutilated body was found on August 9th near a secluded seminar room at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital, to which she had retired after a 36-hour shift, as no resting rooms for doctors existed on the premises.
Police arrested Sanjoy Roy, a hospital volunteer worker who is also associated with the Kolkata police welfarecell.
However, following protests by thousands of doctors and Kolkata citizens claiming “bias” on the city police’s part, the state high court transferred the case last weekend to the federal Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
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“The medical profession [in India] has become vulnerable to violence and women doctors are especially targeted,” said India’s chief justice D Y Chandrachud. Existing legislation, hesaid, did not adequately address institutional safety standards for doctors and medical workers across the country.
Consequently, the court has ordered the formation of a nine-member national task force comprising India’s leading medical experts. It has been asked to file an interim report within three weeks, recommending safety protocols for doctors at their workplaces, to be followed by final proposals two months later.
The supreme court also instructed the CBI to submit its findings in the case to the court on Thursday and it castigated the hospital authorities over delays in reporting the rape and murder. The hospital initially attempted to pass off the doctor’s death as suicide and pressed for her hasty cremation, the court said.
The court also criticised Kolkata police for failing to control a mob armed with iron rods and sticks that ransacked the Kar hospital two days after the intern’s murder, in an apparent bid to disrupt the striking doctors and possibly destroy forensic and other evidence of the crime.
[ Protests across India intensify as mob ransacks hospital where medic was murderedOpens in new window ]
After vandalising the hospital, the mob then attacked tens of thousands of women participating in a “Reclaim the Night” protest in Kolkata, forcing them to flee, as police had either bolted or were simply not deployed by the Trinamool Congress state government to control the violence.
The chief justice also expressed concern over the victim’s name and photograph being posted on social media platforms, despite strict laws prohibiting such disclosures, which carry a potential two-year jail sentence. One such post over the weekend was by TMC MP Rachana Banerjee, which she later withdrew, but only after a complaint had been filed against her in the high court.
The supreme court also expressed concern over the poor working conditions for doctors, especially in state-run hospitals. These included a lack of designated resting rooms after exacting daily work schedules, dysfunctional CCTV cameras and overall inadequate security measures. The latter involved checking patients and their relatives for weapons, which at times were known to have been brandished to threaten doctors into providing preferential treatment.
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