Kolkata protests over rape-murder of doctor turn violent

POLICE in India used tear gas and water cannons on Tuesday (27) to disperse thousands of protesters demanding justice for a doctor who was raped and murdered in Kolkata earlier this month.

The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied body at a state-run hospital in the eastern city has ignited widespread outrage over the persistent issue of violence against women in the country.

Thousands of demonstrators marched towards a government building in Kolkata, calling for the resignation of Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal. As the crowd grew, tensions escalated, leading to clashes with police, who responded with baton charges to break up the protest.

Namita Ghosh, a college student who participated in the protest, told AFP that the crowd had initially intended to "protest peacefully" but was provoked by the police's aggressive response. A

senior police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that at least 100 protesters were arrested for allegedly inciting violence.

Numerous protests in Kolkata prompted by the crime have transformed into unruly political rallies, with police scuffling with demonstrators from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) angry at the state government.

The Hindu-nationalist BJP is the party of prime minister Narendra Modi, but it is an opposition party in West Bengal, of which Kolkata is the capital.

They have accused Banerjee's government of creating an unsafe environment for women that allowed crimes including the doctor's murder to occur.

The woman's body was found in the teaching hospital's seminar hall, suggesting she had gone there for a break during a 36-hour shift.

Doctors' associations in many cities launched strikes over the murder that cut off non-essential services, though medical professionals have since returned to work.

One man has been detained over the crime.

The gruesome nature of the attack has invoked comparisons with the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus.

That incident sparked widespread outrage in a country where sexual violence against women is endemic, with an average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022 in the country of 1.4 billion people. (AFP)