Justice & Safety

The year was 1973 when a 25-year-old nurse at the KEM hospital in Mumbai was sodomised and strangled with a metal dog chain that pushed her to a vegetative state for the rest of her life. Five decades apart, a 31-year-old post graduate resident doctor of Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College was raped and throttled to death last week, with a post-mortem report suggesting inhumane agony. Both happened in hospital premises where the women were employed. Both had brutality writ large. Has the state failed them, and us, again? Unfortunately, it takes bestiality of the highest order to stir the collective Indian conscience. The last time it happened was in December of 2012, when the entire nation put its weight behind ‘Nirbhaya’ — a moniker for ‘the fearless’. Twelve years down the line, the brutal rape in Kolkata has created a matching stir, and exposed the irony behind the moniker coined back then — implying that ‘fearlessness’ of women comes at a cost, and a heavy one!

Constant vulnerability

Though rapes as barbaric as in 1973, 2012, and 2024 occur once in a while, the ground is laid on a continuous curve. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported that in 2022, on average, 90 rapes were registered daily. Cumulatively, all through the year, more than 31,000 rapes were registered by women in India. Zeroing in on the ‘murder with rape/gang rape’ category, a total of 248 cases involving 250 female victims were reported. Of the 248 cases of rape and murder, 62 were reported in Uttar Pradesh, 41 in Madhya Pradesh, 22 in Maharashtra, 14 each in Assam and Odisha, and 12 in Gujarat — the top six states in the list for which figures ran in double digits. Cumulatively, these six states accounted for 165 of the total cases. However, for India, the notoriety of being the ‘Rape Capital of the World’ is not solely because of the numbers — numerous countries have comparable figures; it is because of the insensitive approach we have towards rape victims. A conservatively patriarchal society, police forces sans empathy, insensitive breed of politicians, misogynist tendencies, objectification of women—all create a complex web entrapping half of the Indian population in the constant vulnerability of gendered crimes, including rape.

A dream defiled, but many more

The pain and suffering that the victim was forced to endure in the Kolkata incident before being murdered is unimaginable, and so is the plight of the family that would never fully recover from the horror. Her father, who must have invested emotions and resources for 31 long years to make her daughter what she was, recollected her to be a “hard-working student” who fought with perseverance to achieve her goals and aspired to become a gold medalist — a recollection that would have filled his heart with pride had not the monstrous acts of culprit(s) cut the victim’s life short. This is just one of the hundreds of stories unfolding each year, many of which don’t get enough spotlight. It goes without saying that the brutality of the crime, coupled with its location in a metro city, has made it stand out. However, the Kolkata rape and murder is, in real sense of the term, only the tip of the iceberg.

This argument is further corroborated by the widely acknowledged fact that the NCRB data is highly conservative, since a large number of incidents go unreported throughout India — thanks to the notion of social shame and stigma forcefully married to incidents of rape. Face the reality: women and girls in rural hinterlands and slums might be crumbling under the weight of unreported sexual harassment of proportions we have not even remotely fathomed! It is the case of an unarticulated pain and suffering that is hollowing India from inside. The fear of sexual harassment and love affairs is one of the major reasons girls in rural India are confined, mostly, within the four walls of their homes, and married off at the earliest age possible. While women in cities are paying heavy price for their hard-earned independence at the hand of rapists, their counterparts in rural India—the larger part of the nation—are a step further behind.

Doctors take the streets

It goes without saying that the Kolkata rape and murder has sent shockwaves throughout the country, with junior doctors organising protests and ceasing work to demand swift justice to the victim. The Indian Medical Association, too, began its 24-hour nationwide doctors’ strike on Saturday morning. The largest organisation of medical staff in the country has sought prime minister’s intervention, and put forth five-fold demands—a Central Act incorporating the 2023 amendments to the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 into the draft Hospital Protection Bill of 2019; stringent security protocols in all hospitals; a thorough overhaul of the working and living conditions of doctors; meticulous probe in the Kolkata case through investigation of RG Kar vandalism incident; and appropriate compensation to the victim’s family. Indeed, the protest of doctors has affected medical services across the nation, but at stake are very basic necessities they must be entitled to.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has intensified its investigation. Although the probe hinges around the early arrest of a civic volunteer, the possibility of ‘more than one’ people involved strongly looms. The accused being a regular at the hospital raises the possibility that he knew the young doctor; perhaps even stalked her and/or had interacted with her in some way. The grievous nature of the injuries on her body listed in the post-mortem report released by the police seem to indicate that the rapist-murderer’s violent act was personal, almost vengeful. To commit a crime is one thing, to make it brutal is quite another and to make it inexplicably brutal is a notch higher.

Half a century back...

Back in 1973, the case of Aruna Shanbaug, the nurse who was raped, strangled with a dog leash and left to die by a ward boy whom she had scolded, in Mumbai’s King Edward’s Memorial Hospital in 1973, had itself sent ringing bells. Aruna survived, in a manner of speaking, for she remained in a coma for 43 years, tended lovingly by her colleagues even as protests and campaigns surfaced periodically. She finally passed away in 2015, in the very hospital she was raped. Her rapist got away with serving just seven years in jail. Logically, very strict security protocols should have been put in place for all hospitals around the country after Shanbaug’s ordeal, especially as she remained on the media radar for decades. The Kolkata case is a grim reminder of the lack of safety measures for female medical staff, even after 50 years. But sadly, every state still has cases like what happened at RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata this week. Most state-run hospitals do not appear to have done the needful whereas private ones seem far more careful on this count. Consistent hiring of “civic volunteers” by the police instead of regular recruits has long been an unreported issue as far as Government-run hospitals are concerned. They are paid a pittance but supplement it by other means. Police stations now not only rely on them for information but let them “handle” local disputes too, making them neighbourhood enforcers. Mostly having political affiliations, they are “effective” enforcers, and remain outside any disciplinary purview, unlike regular police staff.

Then and now: all the same

Issues flagged year after year have surfaced time and again—CCTV cameras that don’t work, absence of on-call rooms with wash rooms, ill-lit areas that women staffers prefer to avoid after dark, and inadequate security measures that have made doctors increasingly vulnerable to violence. The larger failure is the chasm between intention and outcome when it comes to women’s safety. Promises made in the aftermath of the horrific December 16 gangrape incident in 2012 have largely been reduced to lip service. The 100 per cent increase in the budgetary allocation of the Nirbhaya Fund for 2024-25 could be appreciable. But, data shows that between 2013 (when it was set up) and 2022, less than half of the allocation had been used. Society and institutions will need to keep up with changing realities. Yet, implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, Redressal) Act, notified in 2013, has been half-hearted. Strict Legal provisions empowering on duty Doctors’ safety should be next in line. In May 2023, the Supreme Court called out “authorities/management/employers” for failing to ensure a “safe and secure work place” for women.

Doctors at government hospitals, often located on sprawling campuses, work in dark and poorly maintained areas. Security is worrisome in many sections of these hospitals. In contrast, private hospitals generally offer better security and working conditions, with improved access control and a safer environment. Numerous cases have highlighted the vulnerability of women in the medical profession to sexual attacks, intimidation, and violence from patients, their attendants, hospital staff, colleagues, seniors, and teachers. Even female patients are at risk. The security conduct of medical colleges needs to be regulated by the government under a central authority. Mere assurances on paper are insufficient without concrete actions. Hospitals and colleges must invest in suitable and safe lodging facilities for resident doctors. The long-overdue need for legislation to address violence against doctors and the abolition of punitive bonds must be urgently addressed. Disciplinary bodies at the college, state, and national levels should ensure that students can raise their concerns without fear of persecution.

Cowardice in the guise of power

In general, rape in India, like in most parts of the world, is a baseless assertion of power, control, and dominance of one gender (male) over the other (mostly female). The heinous crime is a direct manifestation of disequilibrium in society — inculcated over a stretched and unjust period of human history. The disequilibrium is compounded by other hierarchies like caste and socio-economic statuses. The NCRB data, for instance, highlights that the increase in crimes directed at Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes women is more pronounced than in general. Be it family or society, there are ample indications of coward men attempting to subjugate the position of women in society through oppression and violence — rape being the most extreme form.

It is power — political, economic, and social — that allows men of lowest integrity to expect a certain degree of legal impunity while running over the hard-made lives of women and their families. The sadder part is that their sense of impunity is not completely baseless; it is reciprocated fairly well by their alliances and accomplices (in various crimes), particularly in influential political-administrative circles. In the case in consideration, the prime accused worked as a civic volunteer for the police, and is reported to have a certain degree of influence — or at least he perceived so.

This sense of impunity coincides with low conviction rates in rape crimes, which stood between 27-28 per cent from 2018 to 2022, as per the NCRB report. The conviction rate is among the lowest in this category of crime — murder has a conviction rate of 43.8 per cent, hurt (including acid attack) of 35.9 per cent, and kidnapping and abduction of 33.9 per cent. There is no discounting the fact that the sluggish pace of the overburdened Indian judiciary cripples its capacity to deliver justice in a timely manner, but the influence of power cannot be ignored as well.

Bottomline: justice & safety

Domain experts draw a correlation between the hardened provisions of punishment and low conviction rates. They emphasise the need to focus on increasing conviction rates rather than institutionalising harsher punishments. However, there is no tangible proof that the two aspects are mutually antithetic. Very little scholarly effort has been made in India to scientifically understand the complexities of rape, as rooted in Indian society. It is an endeavour that can help tackle a part of the problem in the long run. For now, the nation is burning — the victim’s family is shattered, the medical fraternity is forced to take the streets, general citizens are in utter shock, and politicians are sparing no chance of spilling vitriol at each other.

Under such horrendous circumstances, concerned authorities must prioritise comforting the victim’s family and pacifying the protestors—with actions, not words. For the time being, we can forget mutual mudslinging and brownie points, and behave sensitively, act effectively.

Views expressed are personal