Rape, murder of female doctor in India sparks outcry for women's safety

On August 9, the body of a 31-year-old medical intern was found at RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata. The woman had been raped and murdered.

The case has once again brought to the forefront the debate on women’s safety in India, with particular concerns expressed by women who are health professionals.

“My first reaction was absolute horror. I could feel the anger in my bones,” says Dr Kamna Kakkar, a resident physician in Delhi. “Hospitals are supposed to be safe places and revered like temples. When I put on the white coat to save lives, I expect to be protected.”

Her thoughts were echoed by the seven female doctors and nurses interviewed for this article – and are similar to points raised on two WhatsApp groups by more than 200 health professionals in India.

In addition to protesting to demand better safety measures for women, these health professionals are denouncing the lack of respect they receive in their workplace. They say they are not safe at work and do not have safe places to rest when they work shifts. They also denounce the sexual harassment they suffer from their colleagues and patients.

According to information released by the courts and the police, the raped and murdered woman – the law does not allow her identity to be revealed – was found with serious injuries in the seminar room of the hospital, where she was resting at the end of a 36-hour night shift. A volunteer police officer – an unpaid civilian hired for minor police tasks – was arrested in connection with the crime.

Supreme Court of India rules

The brutality of the case, along with the increasing frequency of reports of sexual crimes against women in India (from 25,000 rape cases in 2012 to 31,000 a decade later), has sparked nationwide anger and condemnation. In response, India’s Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it would hear the case surrounding the woman’s murder and ordered the creation of a national task force to investigate the workplace safety of doctors.

The Supreme Court’s announcement came after more than a dozen protests by medical professionals and thousands of citizens across India.

One of India’s largest unions representing doctors, the Indian Medical Association, is demanding enhanced security protocols – “no less than at an airport” – for all hospitals. In a statement, they called for more security personnel and the installation of closed-circuit television cameras.

The infrastructure at most public hospitals is not designed to keep women safe, doctors told NPR. Female doctors typically do not have specially designed bathrooms or safe places to rest or sleep. “In one case I know of, a female doctor was forced to sleep on the ward because no on-call room was provided for her,” Dr. Kakkar said.

On August 16, following the Kolkata rape and murder, the association, which counts more than 360,000 doctors among its members, announced a nationwide strike to demand safer spaces for women health professionals. Participating doctors refused to treat non-emergency patients. Although exact numbers have not been collected, the Supreme Court ordered the doctors to return to work, saying their strike had deprived Indians of medical care across the country.

A story of gender-based violence

Gender-based violence is a long-standing problem in India. Nearly one in three women in India reported experiencing some form of violence, according to a national health survey conducted by India’s health ministry among nearly 725,000 women across the country.

New laws passed in the wake of a 2012 gang rape in Delhi introduced harsher penalties for violence against women, including longer sentences and even the death penalty for rape. Yet the number of confirmed rape cases has risen from 337,922 in 2014 to 445,256 in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.

Enacting new laws is not the solution, says Karanjeet Kaur, a columnist for the Indian daily The Impression.

“In India, the problem has never been that the laws are not favourable to women. The problem has always been the unequal application of those laws,” Kaur says. “Indian women can’t really hope for much, especially if they come from historically disadvantaged communities.”

The high-profile case also drew attention to India’s low employment rate for women. One reason is that women are unsafe to travel and work. And yet the rape of a doctor in a hospital is shocking, Kaur says, even though a 2015 survey found that about three-quarters of doctors reported experiencing violence in the workplace.

Doctors, she said, “are considered the kin of God,” while many Indians also identified with the challenges she faced in becoming a doctor, only to “have her life taken away so cruelly and so brutally.”

Ruchi Kumar is a journalist who covers conflict, politics, development and culture in India and Afghanistan. She tweets at @RuchiKumar