India’s Latest Rape-Murder Adds to a Cycle of Horror
Another horrific crime against a woman focuses attention on the woeful gender divide in the country.
In New Delhi, medical professionals and students protest against the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata.
Photographer: Sajjad Hussain/AFP
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Around mid-morning on Aug. 9, the body of a 31-year-old trainee doctor was found in a seminar room at R. G. Kar Medical College, the 138-year old Kolkata hospital said to be the oldest private medical school in Asia. According to an autopsy, she’d been raped and strangled to death. There were reportedly wounds all over her body. News accounts say a person is in custody in relation to the incident. Protests sprang up throughout India to denounce the crime as an outrage against women. Karishma Vaswani writes, “the demonstrations are helping to raise much-needed awareness about an epidemic of rape.” But she also notes that it’s becoming a familiar cycle of horror in India. A rape is committed, people protest, police and judicial work is done, often haphazardly. But then nothing happens to change the country.