It could have been me: Will doctor's rape and murder spark change in India?

On August 9, India woke up to the news of the horrific rape and murder of a young resident doctor at her place of work, RG Kar hospital in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state.

It happened during the night stretch of her 36-hour shift. Her screams went unheard in an otherwise busy and bustling hospital. As her body was discovered the next morning, battered and mangled, there were rumours of a gang-rape, as well as allegations of a botched police investigation and the arrest of a possible scapegoat.

This was followed by an attempt to vandalise the hospital premises by goons, perhaps to destroy evidence. In no time, distasteful images of the victim's semi-naked body, covered in blood, bruises and wounds made the rounds on social media.

Even though it's illegal to publicly name rape victims in India, her name charted on several pornographic websites.

As the chaos ensued, frustration and anger burnt my insides. One thought kept running through my mind: it could have been me in her place, easily. I too am a woman doctor. I too work night shifts. I too have rested in my duty in awkward places.

Protesting for justice

Women are the backbone of most Indian hospitals. We're doctors, nurses, multipurpose workers, door-to-door vaccination providers, cleaners and more. We don't hesitate in performing our duties, be it during a busy day or a lonely night.

Our hospital scrubs and white coats protect us, or so we believed. Despite multiple episodes of violence against healthcare workers every year in India, we have persevered in our jobs, unmindful of the lack of adequate level of safety and security that we, especially as women, deserve.

As per the National Crime Records Bureau, a staggering 440,000 crimes against women were reported in 2022 alone (51 crimes an hour), of which approximately 7 percent were recorded as rape. Ironically, Kolkata was deemed as the safest metropolis for women for over three years by this report.

After Aug. 9, all the sexist jokes and jabs that we had been ignoring in our workplaces - from our own colleagues, our own seniors, our patients and their relatives - they all suddenly felt insufferable.

So, we all stepped out on the streets in justice for our sister whose dignity was stripped off of her in death and beyond. Protests across India erupted. Doctors all over the country refused to work for over 11 days until Thursday.

Lawyers, engineers, all those who cared joined the protests. Eventually, the honourable Supreme Court of India intervened and assumed jurisdiction over the matter. The case is still undergoing investigations as we await justice to be served.

Bittersweet victory

Our strike came to an end mainly because we are all emotionally drained to fight a battle against a world not built to sustain ambitious women. We now head back to work as our patients need us more than the world needs justice for a sincere woman who was just doing her job.

But it's a bittersweet victory for us.

A national task force has been assigned to ensure workplace security is put in place, with representation from resident doctors groups. On paper, everything is falling in place.

It will take time, however, for adequate security, proper restrooms, and separate male and female washrooms to appear inside hospitals. It will take an eternity's time for the world to accept that it's never the victim's fault - it's the rapists'.

After all of this, a male colleague had the gall to ask me, "will you women use this incident as an excuse to shrug off night duties in the hospital now?"

I was taken aback. I wanted to lash out at him for the insensitivity of this question. But, I didn't. He was clueless to the depths of despair which all of us women had worked through in the past few days.

So I just replied, "No, we will continue our shifts" and moved on. I wished that he could understand that clipping the wings of an innocent bird does not make the skies safe to fly.

I wished he could understand our need to fly. I wished he cared enough.