Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanded severe penalties for crimes against women as indignation and protests against the horrific rape and murder of a doctor intensified, as thousands of women marched across numerous Indian towns throughout the course of the night.
Women staged candlelit marches with placards reading “reclaim the night” in a number of locations, including Kolkata in eastern India, where protests by other medical professionals calling for safer and better working conditions have been sparked by the rape and death of a trainee physician last week.
Earlier this week, a number of government hospitals in Indian cities shut down all of their departments save their emergency rooms while junior physicians protested outside and called for justice for the victim.
The 31-year-old doctor was found dead on Friday. Police said she had been raped and murdered and a police volunteer was subsequently arrested in connection with the crime.
“As a society, we have to think about the atrocities being committed against our mothers, daughters and sisters. There is outrage against this in the country. I can feel this outrage,” Modi said in an address to the nation on its 78th Independence Day on Thursday.
The rape has revived memories of a similar case in New Delhi in 2012, when a gang of men raped and severely injured a 23-year-old student in a moving Delhi bus, leading eventually to her death.
“This horrific incident has once again reminded us that women disproportionately bear the weight of ensuring their own safety,” Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt said in a post on her Instagram page, which has more than 85 million followers.
Doctors in India’s crowded and often squalid government hospitals have long complained of being overworked and underpaid and say not enough is done to curb violence levelled at them by people angered over the medical care on offer.
Crimes against women in India rose 4% in 2022 from the previous year, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), released late last year, showed.
