Protest against the rape-murder of the trainee doctor of india

India has a highly publicised, shocking rape case (or rape and murder) once every few years. In 2012, a young physiotherapy intern called Jyothi Singh   travelling in a bus at night with her boyfriend in Delhi was brutally assaulted, raped and killed by a gang of five. Public protests and candlelight vigils were held, and sensationalists made capital out of it on social media. The culprits were arrested, tried and hanged, except for one who was a juvenile at the time.

Trainee doctor 

But it happens again. This time, it’s the rape-murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor in one of India’s best-known medical institutions that has shocked everyone.

The earlier case was pretty much open and shut. This one is highly controversial, and critics claim there is an official cover-up.

After the initial chaos and accusations of an official cover-up, a former director of state-owned R. G.. Kar Medical College and Hospital was arrested and grilled. According to the news agency PTI, the Calcutta High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation, taking it away from a West Bengal government-constituted special investigation team appointed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

The investigation was handed over to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Sanjay Roy, a man with connections to the hospital hierarchy and familiar with the hospital, was arrested as the suspect.

The CBI says he has confessed to the crime ‘without any emotion’, giving every sordid detail. They have ruled out the prevailing theory that it was a gang rape. His psychoanalytic profile describes him as: ‘Animal like instinct, no remorse, pervert.’ Investigators say he is addicted to violent pornography. 

But the public is far from satisfied with this explanation. They believe there was more than one attacker.

Horrific injuries 

The victim suffered horrific injuries. If anyone wants all the gory details, they are splashed all over social media. Judging from all the internal and external injuries, there are signs of torture, with private parts slashed, and she was possibly blind when she was sexually assaulted -- her eyes were filled with glass shards and bleeding when the body was found. She may have been unconscious, or even dead, when she was raped.

This suggests extreme, unspeakable brutality. This, plus the amount of biological fluid (semen) found inside her has convinced many, including medical experts, that there was more than one assailant.

But Sanjoy Roy, though not a big man, is a boxer, and obviously very strong. Evil is not always a matter of size; it is one of sheer perverse determination. Evil at work can have ten times the power of the good. 

After being arrested, Roy defiantly kept saying, ‘hang me.’ The CBI says he admitted to the crime with no hesitation. But a subsequent polygraph test produced confusing results, with Roy saying he didn’t do it.

Polygraph test results are not admissible as evidence in court.

This is still an ongoing investigation and the coming days could reveal if there is indeed an official cover-up of a grisly murder (we are hardly strangers to that in Sri Lanka) and Sanjay Roy was just the ‘front man’ for others.

There were several questions that bothered me from the start. The victim was resting in the auditorium when she was attacked. Why wasn’t there a CCTV camera in the auditorium? Why was she trying to sleep there during a 36-hour work stretch? Aren’t there rest rooms in such a big hospital, and don’t resident doctors have a hostel?

This is what I could gather after a week of exhaustive searching on social media,  with shocking details about how this state-owned institution treats its doctors, minor staff and medical students.

To begin with, this underfunded institution can’t afford private security guards. The police are supposed to be there, but obviously they are not effectively equipped to cover the entire hospital. Arundathi Roy wrote eloquently during the pandemic how slashing the budget for the government  medical sector crippled hospitals, making thousands die due to lack of oxygen and other chronic shortages, while the private medical sector fleeced patients outrageously.

Staff shortage at RG Kar is so acute that patients sometimes pay to see a doctor.

There is a standing joke at RG Kar, it seems, that starting from the director, the hospital hierarchy has a pecking order coming down to stray dogs, mice and cockroaches. Students and trainee doctors are listed below those insects.

Even post-graduate trainees need to curry favour with the top hierarchy (senior doctors) to pass exams. Sometimes, their superiors don’t allow them to use their bathrooms, and trainees run to the nearby shopping plaza for toilet needs. Hostels are too far away for a quick nap and rest, and trainees must grab a little rest wherever they can during atrociously long working sessions. That’s why the victim was sleeping in the auditorium.

Junior resident 

As a second year junior resident, she had to look after the patients, do errands for her seniors and lecturers, get the discharge cards printed, fill in the gas and A/C and put water in the coolers, and give expensive gifts to her senior faculty for fear they will fail you otherwise. It sounds incredible. 

India is way below Sri Lanka in the human development index; India ranks 110 out of 169 in the 2022 social progress index report, and Sri Lanka is in 74th place. Not that we as a nation get high grades in the way superiors often treat their subordinates, and our medical profession needs to take a hard look at their own ethical standards, but the situation in India seems to be truly shocking. 

I just hope things are better in our own teaching hospitals. Let’s not forget that  gruesome episode where a patient was raped and killed in a Negombo government hospital by a doctor. He got caught only because a female attendant who saw the body being dragged had the courage to testify. 

There are allegations too, that professors demand sexual favours from their students. If they refuse, they have to work four times as harder to ensure they are not failed. A 2023 Indian study found that one quarter of doctors were depressed. Doctors and students in Kolkata have been on strike against the institution’s director Dr. Sandip Ghosh (forced to resign since) alleging he ran a medical mafia trafficking in bio waste to unidentified corpses with a section of his students. 

It is alleged that the murdered doctor was collecting evidence against this, and that there was a group within the hospital which wanted to silence her.

Sanjay Roy worked as a volunteer for RG Kar. His task was to guide visitors to the huge institution to respective wards and sections. Thus, he had free access to it at all times. Most amazing, he worked as a civic volunteer for the Kolkata police, and this is a man known to be a hard drinker and wife beater. Married four times, three of his wives left him while the fourth died of illness. One mother in law said he caused a miscarriage by beating his wife when she was three months pregnant.

Why did the Kolkata police employ a man with such a track record as a civic volunteer?

Many argue that the victim’s body was cremated as instructed by the police, which means there is no room for further post mortems. Why was there such a hurry to cremate the body?

Another report says construction work was undertaken at the scene of the rape-murder the day after the crime, but was halted when workers and doctors protested. Critics claim that the hospital’s racketeers (and the victim’s enemies) have powerful political allies.

According to the 2021 annual report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 31,677 rape cases were registered across India, or an average of 86 cases per day. Nearly 90 cases a day were reported by the same source in 2022.

Many more go unreported due to fear of reprisal.