Before Kolkata Doctor Rape, Broken Promise to Keep Doctors Safe, ET HealthWorld

Authors: Sakshi Dayal and Subrata Nag Choudhury

Kolkata: Five years ago, the government of India’s West Bengal state pledged to curb violence against doctors, promising public hospitals better safety equipment, female guards to support female doctors and controlled entry points, according to an internal government memo seen by Reuters.

None of these measures were implemented at the public hospital where, on 9 August, a young doctor was sexually assaulted and murdered, allegedly by a police volunteer, four trainee doctors told Reuters.

Instead, in the days leading up to the murder-assault that sparked nationwide outrage and a doctors’ strike, only two male guards manned RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, they said. They were supplemented by several closed-circuit cameras that did not comprehensively cover the vast grounds, according to the interns.

One of the doors to the lecture hall where the doctor was resting during a 36-hour shift when she was attacked did not have a lock, said two other doctors in training who were also sleeping there. The air conditioning in a designated break room had broken down, they said.

According to a June 17, 2019, note from the state health department, after two doctors from another hospital were attacked by a patient’s relatives in 2019, the West Bengal authorities promised to install “effective security equipment and systems”, regulate entry and exit from the hospital premises and work out a compensation policy for the staff who were attacked.

The two-page document, first reported by Reuters, was prepared after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met with medical trainees protesting the attack on their colleagues that day as a “note of record” of the interaction. The note did not say to whom it was addressed.

According to the document, Banerjee ordered officials to take “effective and expeditious” action “within a specified time frame.” It did not provide details of the preparatory period.

“If such precautions had been taken, this incident might never have happened,” said Dr Riya Bera, a postdoctoral fellow at RG Kar, commenting on her colleague’s death.

Asked by Reuters about the 2019 assurances, West Bengal Health Minister NS Nigam said the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted recovery for two years but “a lot” had been done since 2021, including strengthening CCTV surveillance and introducing private security at hospitals.

“We are determined to do the remaining work and fill the gaps that were created after the RG Kar incident,” he said.

On August 28, Banerjee also announced $12 million to begin work on improvements such as better lighting in health facilities, rest areas and hiring women security guards.

The prime minister’s office and RG Kar Hospital did not respond to requests for comment.

Authorities are still investigating the Aug. 9 incident, in which no charges have yet been filed.

“PATRIARCHAL ATTITUDES AND ORDERINGS”

The attack on the doctor in Kolkata, who cannot be named due to local law, brought back memories of the 2012 gang rape of a physiotherapist on a bus in Delhi that shocked India and sparked protests.

Reuters interviewed 14 female doctors working in government hospitals in West Bengal and other parts of India about the challenges they face in a country where women’s safety has long been a concern.

They described poor working conditions, including aggressive treatment of patients by their families and having to sleep on benches in dimly lit corridors due to a lack of rest areas.

Some doctors have told of taking naps in break rooms without locks during long shifts, only to have people barge in. Others have described being confronted by male patients who took photos of them without permission, claiming they were documenting evidence of their treatment.

Indian Medical Association (IMA) president RV Asokan told Reuters that while the August 9 murder-assault appeared unusual in its brutality, “the fact that anyone can enter shows the vulnerability of this place, and this at a time when more and more women are joining the profession.”

Some doctors have taken self-defense measures: One doctor at a hospital in the state of Odisha, neighboring West Bengal, said her father gave her a knife so she could fend off potential attackers.

Dr Gauri Seth, a medical intern in Kolkata, told Reuters that after the August 9 incident she would no longer go on duty without pepper spray or a scalpel to defend herself.

According to IMA, the country’s largest doctors’ organisation, about 60 per cent of doctors in India are women and three-fourths of them have reported being subjected to verbal abuse, physical attacks and other forms of harassment while on duty.

“Due to deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes and prejudices, patients’ relatives are more likely to oppose women in the medical profession… (they) also face various forms of sexual violence at the workplace,” India’s Supreme Court said in an August 20 ruling ordering the setting up of a task force on health worker safety.

After the 2012 Delhi gang rape, India introduced tough laws to regulate crimes against women, including broadening the definition of rape to include any penetration without consent, and criminalizing voyeurism and stalking.

But according to activists and government data, the situation remains grim.

Nearly 450,000 crimes against women were reported in 2022 — the latest year for which data is available — up 4% on 2021, government data shows. More than 7% of alleged crimes involved rape.

Lawyer and human rights activist Vrinda Grover blamed inadequate training of police officers and broader cultural issues.

“What’s very disturbing about this case is the ordinariness of what the victim was doing: She was at her workplace,” she said. “There’s something wrong with a society where this kind of behavior is so common.”

LIVING YOUR DREAM

Family members and friends told Reuters that the 31-year-old doctor from Kolkata, whose mutilated, half-naked body was found by his colleagues, had always wanted to become a doctor.

“When I met her by chance last year, she told me she was very happy and was fulfilling her dreams,” said Somojit Moulik, who studied medical school with the victim.

When Reuters visited the victim’s family home, the nameplate showed only her first and last name with the prefix Dr, a sign of how much her relatives valued her achievements.

Her aunt said in an interview that her niece was to marry the doctor she had studied with at the end of the year and that she had not complained about safety issues at work.

But after her death, colleagues spoke out. Dr Shreya Shaw, a trainee at RG Kar Hospital, said she saw two strangers waking her up at around 3am while she was sleeping in a designated toilet that had no locks.

“It was quite scary at first to wake up in the dark and see unknown men,” she said, adding that she was shocked that patients were able to enter the floor where she was resting without any obstacles.

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(Additional reporting by Sahiba Chawdhary in Kolkata, Tora Agarwala in Guwahati, Jatindra Dash in Bhubaneswar; writing by Sakshi Dayal; editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Katerina Ang)