Doctor raped and killed

A 31-year-old female doctor went to sleep in the seminar hall during her free time on Friday morning after working overnight in one of India's oldest hospitals. He was last seen alive in that hospital in West Bengal that day. The next morning colleagues found the half-naked body of the female doctor lying on the seminar hall stage. Numerous injury marks can be seen on his body.

The doctor of Kolkata's 138-year-old KG Kar Medical College was murdered after gang-rape, police said. A hospital volunteer has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the incident.

Hundreds of thousands of women across the state, including Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, have announced a march called "Reclaim the Night" at midnight on Wednesday. It is expected that thousands of people will protest on the streets during this march. The citizens of the country have started a movement in different provinces of India due to this terrible rape and murder in West Bengal. They have called for protests demanding the right to live freely and without fear.

The call for the march, on the eve of India's Independence Day on Thursday, has created widespread tension in the country. Angry doctors are on strike across India, including West Bengal. They demanded to make a strict central law for the safety of doctors.

The tragic incident in Kolkata has once again brought to the fore the incidents of violence against doctors and nurses in the country. About 30 percent of doctors and about 80 percent of nurses in India are women. These women in healthcare are at higher risk than their male counterparts.

The incident at the Kolkata hospital last Friday highlights the safety risks for government hospital workers in many other Indian states. RG Kar Hospital treats more than 3500 patients daily. Many of the trainee doctors perform duties for up to 36 consecutive hours while providing medical care to patients. There is no separate rest room for doctors or nurses in the hospital even if they work overtime. That is why they were forced to rest in a seminar room on the third floor of the hospital.

According to reports in the country's media, the hospital volunteer arrested in connection with the rape and murder of a female doctor has been accused of involvement in crime in the past. Still he had free access to various hospital wards; Which was seen in the CCTV footage. However, police said that the volunteer's past crimes were not investigated.
Madhuparna Nandi, a junior doctor at Kolkata's 76-year-old National Medical College, told the BBC, "Hospitals have always been our first home." We go home only to rest. But we can never imagine that it would be so unsafe. I am scared after this incident.

What happened in Kolkata on Friday is not an isolated incident. In 1973, nurse Aruna Shanbag was raped in a famous hospital in Mumbai, Maharashtra. She was raped by a ward worker of the hospital. The rapist also tried to strangle him. After this incident, he suffered severe brain injury and paralysis for 42 years. Aruna Shanbag died in 2015. Recently, in another state of Kerala, a 23-year-old medical intern, Vandana Das, was attacked by a drunken patient with a surgical knife.
Thousands of people are protesting for the safety of doctors and nurses in different states of India
India does not have strict laws to protect healthcare workers. All 25 states in the country have laws to protect health care workers, but none of them provide for convictions. A 2015 survey by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) found that nearly 75 percent of doctors in India have faced some form of workplace violence. IMA president RV Asokan said that there is no security system in the hospitals. One of the reasons may be that no one thinks of hospitals as conflict zones.
After the rape and murder of a woman doctor in Kolkata, security measures have been tightened in government hospitals in various states of the country. Doctors in some states have already taken to the streets to protest for safety. They are on strike on Wednesday.