What’s often known as the City of Joy is currently boiling with anger over the rape and murder of a trainee doctor who was on night duty at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital.
“Shocking”, “chilling”, “horrifying”, “blood is boiling” — this how people, particularly women, of Kolkata are reacting, saying that if a doctor in a top government hospital can be sexually assaulted and killed while on duty, then no one was safe.
“We cannot imagine such barbarity in the heart of the city. If a woman doctor is not safe within hospital premises, which woman is safe? Police and the ruling political party are trying to hush up the case, it seems, which makes our blood boil. It is a black day for women in the State and country,” Ishita Mukhopadhyay, Professor of Economics at the University of Calcutta, said, equating the incident with the Nirbhaya case of some years ago.
Pragya Choudhary, 24, who has moved to Kolkata only five months ago to take up a job in a Central government department, is shocked because she has, so far, found the city quite safe for women. She now feels alarmed.
“The mysterious death of a junior doctor inside the premises of a reputed medical institute is worrisome and tragic. The safety of women at the workplace and beyond should be unflinching. Stringent measures should be taken to prevent laxity in future. So far, personally, I have not felt any danger lurking around me, be it while taking a cab to the airport in the wee hours or returning from Howrah station at midnight. I have also walked back home from a cinema hall after a late-night movie,” Ms. Choudhary said.
Susmita Das, who relocated to Kolkata not very long ago, after having spent many years in cities like Chennai and Chicago, said that hospitals and corporate offices should now ramp up security measures and not just increase the presence of male guards. “I could say until yesterday that Kolkata was the safest place in which I have lived and worked. After this incident has come to light, I am not so sure. Not only is it chilling that the attack took place while the doctor was on duty and at her workplace, it is absolutely frightening that this happened at a hospital, the one place every being turns to for safety and care,” Dr. Das, a post-doctoral research fellow, said.
A post-graduate medical student, who did not wish to be identified, said the work environment in government hospitals was already poor and now someone had shown the “sheer audacity” to rape and murder an on-duty physician. “It’s a sorry state of affairs throughout Bengal, with no designated doctors’ duty room, let alone a functional hygienic washroom even. We have never been provided safety in what we call our second home,” she said.
“Similar incidents have happened in other medical colleges also, but nobody raises their voice. If they do, it is not reported. If it is reported, then facts are distorted, it takes a political angle and the actual matter is suppressed,” a student enrolled in the MD (Doctor of Medicine) programme added.
“The gruesome incident throws my hometown in poor light where women’s safety is concerned. It also gives a dismal picture of education and general state of affairs. Living in Mumbai, safety is what we take for granted,” Sreelekha Maitra, an advertising professional working in Mumbai, who happens is visiting her home in Kolkata, said.
