Outside the seminar hall at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, a white-and-blue tape has the words ‘Kolkata Police do not cross’. At any time of the day, the brown door with a wooden signboard is guarded by two policemen — all in a bid to bar entry of anyone into the room.
A junior doctor on duty was raped and murdered in this very room in the early hours of August 9, triggering a massive outrage and an indefinite doctors’ strike for justice and better work conditions.
On Monday, after 66 days of in-camera hearing and examination of 120 witnesses, a court in Kolkata’s Sealdah finally gave its ruling — life imprisonment for Sanjoy Roy, a 35-year-old civic volunteer attached to the Kolkata Police, who was found guilty of the crime on Saturday.
In the corridors of the busy RG Kar Medical College, which was the victim’s world until the incident, the memory of the junior doctor lingers on. The air is heavy with disappointment at the final ruling, with many still calling for the death penalty for Roy.
“This department, this ward, the building and the hospital premises was her world, which ended abruptly and violently. Or else now she would be sitting and working with us” a post-graduate trainee doctor of chest medicine tells The Indian Express. Around him, doctors, nurses and attendants are bustling about.
But it’s not only the seminar room that still bears evidence of the rape-murder and its aftermath. Just outside the main entrance is the site of protest, where doctors spent months demanding justice and a change in work conditions. A painting of Goddess Durga holding the body of a junior doctor lies freshly garlanded. On a table beside it is a shrine — two symbolic pictures of the victim, garlanded with fresh incense candles in front.
Piles of papers, brush, and paints are littered around, with signs screaming ‘We want justice’, ‘Ogo Matri Shakti, Prati Inchite Justice Nio Mepe (O Mother Goddess, do not leave an inch where justice is concerned), and ‘Amar Didir Bichar Chai (We want justice for our sister)’.
Right at the back of the now-empty protest site are relatives of patients, who are resting after a heavy day’s running around. One of them, Subrata Purkayait from Hooghly district, was at the hospital on August 9, when the incident sparked the protests. His wife had just had a baby girl, and he was completing formalities for their discharge when a crowd of media and police gathered at the hospital.
The incident left Subrata, who’s now here on account of his infant daughter’s breathing issues, deeply shaken, he says. “I have a daughter. If I’m doing everything to save my five-month-old daughter, it pains me to think about the pain that the parents who made her a doctor are going through. I just pray that she gets justice.”
As the day progresses and the hour of the ruling draws near, security is beefed up at the hospital. The sprawling hospital is now guarded by the Central Industrial Security Force, with teams from the Kolkata police personnel.
Some 5 minutes from the protest site, the small garden has a symbolic bust of the victim. The bust, named ‘Cry of the Hour’, was erected in memory of ‘Abhaya’ – the name protesters call the victim by.
Protesters are upset at the ruling. “I’m not in a position to talk,” said Dr Subhayan Mondal, the victim’s classmate after the ruling. Another protester, final-year MBBS student Saikat Talukdar, believes more people were involved.
“It’s not possible for anyone to commit the crime alone and leave the crime scene without being noticed,” he says.
Dr Shreya, a PGT doctor at RG Kar Hospital, calls the ruling “deeply disappointing”.
“The accused was apprehended the very next day following the crime. Both her parents believe there is more to this case. I agree. This outcome feels like a mockery of the judicial system,” she says.
Across the city, there was a wave of disappointment.
“People are not able to accept the farce in the name of justice,” says Dr Biplab Chandra, secretary, West Bengal State Committee of Medical Service Center. Emphasizing that the fight for justice for the trainee doctor would continue, he demands “a deeper investigation into potential accomplices beyond Roy”.
“Surely, the state administration and police did not destroy evidence just to save civic volunteer Sanjoy Roy?” Dr Chandra says.
Dr Tapas Pramanick, another leading figure of the doctors’ protests, raised several questions on the trial process.
Arguing that the case met the criteria for the “rarest of the rare” case that warrants death penalty, Dr Pramanick hits out at CBI for its investigation. “The CBI has not yet clarified what was the motive behind Sanjay Roy’s committing the crime.”
“The public outcry highlights the deep-seated anger and frustration over the perceived inadequacies of the justice system in this case,” says another doctor who actively took part in the protest, adding: “The movement for justice appears far from over.”