Way back in November, 1973, a junior nurse at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, Aruna Shanbaug, was brutally assaulted by a ward boy, leaving her blind, deaf and paralysed. She was 25 when she was sodomised by the hospital cleaner, who strangled her with metal chains, and left her to die.
Shanbaug lived on for 42 years in a vegetative state on life-support at the hospital, cared for by fellow nurses before she finally passed away in 2015. Her attacker, Sohanlal Bharta Walmiki, was not even charged for raping her since sodomy was not considered rape under Indian laws at the time. He was freed after serving a seven-year-sentence for robbery and attempted murder. Just over half-a-century down the line, on August 9, a 31-year-old junior doctor at Kolkata’s R G Kar Medical College and Hospital was brutally raped and murdered when she was resting at a seminar hall at night after having put in 36 hours of non-stop work.
One person was promptly arrested, who confessed to the crime, and even asked that he be hanged for it. But forensic tests on the nature of injuries - bleeding from both her eyes and mouth and injuries over the face, nails, belly, left leg, neck, right hand, ring finger, lips and bleeding from her private parts - suffered by the woman, indicate more than one person is most likely involved. The police in this case have sorely fallen short, leaving the Calcutta High Court with no other option than to order that the case be handed over to the CBI. Initially, the authorities, including the hospital, sought to pass it off as suicide. The police eventually thought it fit to launch a murder investigation, but that too only after the victim’s parents complained. Police apart, even the state government cut a sorry figure when hours after the incident came to light the Health department shifted the Principal of the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital to Calcutta Medical College and Hospital in the same post; the government ought to have shown a modicum of sensitivity by keeping the Principal out which the court finally did. The CBI, however, has now detained the Principal for questioning and, hopefully, more than what meets the eye will be revealed. On her part, West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, who is in charge of both police and health has called for justice – death penalty. Demanding death penalty is all fine, but it is a matter of judicial process, which will take its own time and the outcome will eventually depend on the quality of the investigation. It must be remembered that the trial in the infamous Nirbhaya incident of 2012 had lingered for seven long years even though it had appeared like an open-and-shut case.
Inevitably, and rightly at that, the brutal rape and murder of the Kolkata doctor has sent shockwaves across the medical fraternity, who are demanding their safety at the workplace besides justice for the departed, who had dreamed of securing a gold medal in her Post Graduate examination. Such protest by the medical fraternity is not new, though. Between Aruna Shanbaug and the R G Kar junior doctor, there have been innumerable cases of assault on doctors and other medical staff in hospitals all over the country by attendants of deceased patients who held the former responsible. Protests followed, candles lit and demands for safety made, but little changed. Can the death of the junior doctor now move the mountain?
