A man has been charged in the high-profile case of a doctor’s rape and murder in a Kolkata hospital, a crime that prompted widespread anger and protests over the threat of sexual violence faced by women in India.
The suspect, Sanjay Roy, was arrested the day after the young doctor’s bloodied body was discovered on 9 August in a room at RG Kar hospital, where she had gone to rest after a 36-hour shift.
On Monday the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) confirmed he had been formally charged with rape and murder.
Roy was a volunteer at the hospital assisting patients. The CBI charge sheet said he had raped and then murdered the doctor as she slept. It indicated that only Roy was involved in the crime and that he could face the death penalty.
The CBI charged Roy on the basis of interviews and CCTV footage, which appeared to show him entering the seminar room at about 4.30am and then emerging about 30 minutes later. The woman’s body was discovered hours later by a junior doctor, with her eyes, mouth and genitals bleeding. An autopsy revealed she had about 25 internal and external injuries as a result of the attack and had died by strangulation.
The brutality of the doctor’s rape and murder sent ripples of horror across the country, with the supreme court saying the case had “shocked the conscience of the nation”.
The outrage was compounded by allegations that senior hospital staff had tried to cover up the incident. The then head of the hospital, Sandip Ghosh, allegedly made the victim’s family wait several hours before allowing them to see her body and they were initially informed she had taken her own life. Ghosh was later arrested on charges of tampering with evidence.
The hospital was said to have taken 14 hours to get an official report filed to the police. The parents of the doctor alleged that police had also attempted to cover up the crime and bribe them to stay quiet.
The brutality of the murder and allegations of a cover-up prompted mass protests across the country and a lengthy strike by junior doctors in Kolkata, who demanded that the state government do more to protect their safety in hospitals and ensure justice for the victim.
The strikes against the West Bengal government continued for weeks, with protesters saying they would not return to work until their demands were met. They were finally called off after a meeting with the West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, who said she had agreed to most of their demands, but resumed soon after when doctors said they were not satisfied.
Six junior doctors are on a hunger strike in Kolkata, which they began this week, with the removal of the state health secretary and accountability for the alleged corruption and cover-up of the crime among their demands.
The case also prompted a wider discussion around the issue of women’s safety in India, which has remained a longstanding concern despite numerous high-profile rapes and killings of women prompting promises of change. In 2012, the story of a young women who was gang raped and killed on a bus and her body then dumped by the road stirred up global outrage and led to changes in the law and promises for the greater protection of women in public spaces.
Nationwide protests broke out again in 2019 after a veterinary doctor was raped and killed, and her body burned in the city of Hyderabad. This year there was outrage after a Spanish cyclist was gang raped as she travelled through the state of Jharkhand.
Activists say new laws and stricter punishments have done little to address the root causes of sexual violence in India and, according to government data, the problem is worsening. The most recent data from 2022 shows that almost 450,000 crimes against women were reported, up 4% on the previous year, with more than 7% of the alleged crimes rape related. Due to a deep-rooted culture of stigma and shame around rape and sexual assault, experts say the real figures are likely much higher.