image credit: the guardian

There was a candlelight protest at the Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad on August 12, 2024, against the rape and murder of a young doctor from Kolkata.

After a trainee nurse was raped and killed in the eastern state of West Bengal, thousands of doctors across India went on strike to demand better safety for health workers.

Police in Kolkata, India, say that the resident doctor’s body was found in a seminar hall at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital last Friday. There were multiple injuries and signs of sexual assault on the body. One suspect has been caught.

On Monday, medical groups in several states told doctors at government hospitals to stop all elective services forever. They also wanted the case to move quickly through the courts and for a protective committee for health workers to be set up.

Dr. Sarvesh Pandey, general secretary of the Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA), said, “About 300,000 doctors from across the country have joined the protest, and we expect more to join tomorrow.”

Doctors in Kolkata and Delhi, the capital, were seen carrying signs that said, “Save our doctors, save our future.” In the city of Hyderabad in the south, doctors held a vigil with candles.

Many of the doctors also talked about acts of violence against health workers and fears of physical abuse by patients or their families who were angry.

As stated at the time, the Indian Medical Association did a poll in 2015 and found that 75% of doctors in India had been violently attacked in some way.

In a letter to the health minister posted on X on Tuesday, the association said, “The murder of this young lady doctor is not the first and it would not be the last if corrective measures are not taken.” The letter also asked for an investigation into the working conditions of doctors and a fair investigation into the brutal murder case.

One doctor was raped and killed at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, India, on August 11, 2024. On that day, doctors went on strike to protest. The police stood outside the emergency room.

Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, said she was shocked to hear that the student doctor had been killed in the hospital. She agreed with protesters that the case should be looked into more quickly.

India has had a hard time for years trying to deal with its high rate of violence against women. A number of high-profile rape cases have brought the problem to the attention of people around the world.

One third of all rapes in India were reported to the National Crime Records Bureau in 2022, with an average of 86 cases per day.

And experts say that the number of cases that have been reported may not even come close to the real number. This is because rape victims and their families live in a very conservative country where shame and stigma surround them.

In 2012, a medical student was gang-raped, abused, and left to die after being attacked on a public bus in New Delhi. This may have been India’s most well-known case in recent years.

The case and the mass protests that followed got a lot of attention from the media around the world, which led the government to change the law. In 2013, the rape law was changed to include more types of rape and treat those crimes very harshly. These included rape, sexual assault, voyeurism, and stalking.

Even with these changes, the country still has a lot of rapes. Victims and supporters say the government is not doing enough to protect women and punish attackers.