Why Indian doctors are protesting after the rape and death of a colleague

The rape and killing of a 31-year-old woman medical resident has touched off protests across India as the country grapples with inadequate protections for women and increasing reports of gender-based violence.
The demonstrations began in Kolkata — the capital of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal — following the woman’s rape and killing, which took place on August 9 at a medical school. They’ve since spread to other states, as well as the country’s capital, New Delhi.
The death of the trainee is just the latest of several high-profile recent incidents of gender-based violence in India, and it comes at a time when sexual violence appears to be on the rise: According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there was a 20 percent increase in reported rapes in 2022 compared to 2021.
The Indian government implemented stricter laws against sexual- and gender-based violence, as well as some national strategies to address it, following international outcry over the 2012 case of a young woman who was gang raped and killed on a bus. But as the current tragedy and other high-profile cases suggest, those laws have not ended India’s systemic problems with gender-based violence, and now, many of the protesters say they’ve had enough.
As part of the protests, thousands of doctors (by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of doctors) have left their posts. On Saturday, doctors across the country — led primarily by women — held a 24-hour strike. Over the past few days, some physicians, such as a group of doctors in New Delhi, have attempted to set up limited free care as part of their demonstrations, and most have refused to see non-emergency patients. Government officials have demanded that the protesting doctors return to work as usual; they have refused until their demands are met.
Political leaders have called for justice. In an address on August 15 — India’s independence day — Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, without mentioning the Kolkata rape and death, that everyone in the country must “seriously think about the kind of atrocities which are taking place against our mothers, sisters, daughters” and that “crime against women should be investigated more urgently.”
As of now, the investigation into the rape and death continues, as do renewed calls for India to strengthen legal protections for medical professionals generally and women specifically.
There are still a number of unknowns about the woman at the heart of the protests, who, per Indian law, has not been publicly named. However, we do know she worked at Kolkata’s government-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. She reportedly fell asleep in a seminar room at the hospital, after a long shift as a trainee physician. The following morning, on August 9, her colleagues found her body.
An autopsy report showed signs of sexual violence. A volunteer with the police, identified as Sanjay Roy, has been arrested and charged with her murder. The woman’s parents insist that more people were involved. Federal officials have taken over the investigation of the case.
As the inquiry continues, doctors are protesting for safer conditions at their hospitals, including a law that would remove bail for those accused of attacking doctors. They are also demanding a swift resolution to the case and have prompted an examination of larger systemic issues with Indian gender-based violence, including stigma around sexual assault in the country and mistrust of local police, according to the Associated Press.
Religious and ethnic minorities have been subject to gender-based and sexual violence by the state. Perhaps one of the most shocking historical cases is the mass rape perpetrated by the Indian military in Kashmir in 1991. More recently, in Jammu, a part of Kashmir that is a site of government repression and popular uprising, an 8-year-old girl was kidnapped, held in a Hindu temple, tortured, raped, and murdered by a former government officer and police co-conspirators in 2017. Police said the crime was part of an effort to push the nomadic Muslim community to which the girl belonged out of the area.
Infamously, Modi’s government overturned the sentences of 11 men convicted of raping a Muslim woman in the 2002 Gujarat riots, though they were eventually sent back to jail. Modi was at the time chief minister of Gujarat, and around 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the riots. And cases like the woman’s proliferate at the community level as well; in the wake of her case, three doctors were accused of raping a nurse in northern India.
“There’s so much gender-based violence” in India, Ather Zia, an anthropology professor at Northern Colorado University, told Vox. She added that’s by no means exclusive to India, though. “That’s the entire world.”
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