In India, thousands of angry protesters are calling for justice after the rape and murder of a doctor as widespread strikes by healthcare workers entered a second week.
The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied body at a state-run hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata on August 9 sparked medical strikes and protests across India, channeling anger at the chronic issue of violence against women.
Doctors’ associations from government-run hospitals in many cities across India continued strikes on Monday that cut non-essential services.
The murdered doctor was found in the teaching hospital’s seminar hall, suggesting she had gone there for a break during a 36-hour-long shift.
An autopsy confirmed sexual assault and, in a petition to the Kolkata High Court, her parents said they suspected their daughter was gang raped.
Many of the protests in multiple cities have been led by doctors and other healthcare workers but have also been joined by tens of thousands of ordinary Indians demanding action.
With non-essential medical procedures closed, some of the striking doctors in the capital New Delhi offered to see patients for free outside India’s health ministry.
India’s Supreme Court has also taken up the case, overseeing the process in Kolkata’s High Court, with a hearing set for Tuesday while Doctors are demanding implementation of the Central Protection Act, a bill to protect healthcare workers from violence.
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 and has sparked widespread outrage in a country where sexual violence against women is endemic.
Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India and statistics show an average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022 in the country of 1.4 billion people.
Indian media reported on Monday that five people had been arrested, accused of raping a child at a bus station in northern Uttarakhand state.
Discover more from LN247
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
