Disappointment, disbelief, outrage, frustration. The life sentence to Sanjay Roy for the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College sparked the gamut of negative reactions among doctors and activists who have held protest after protest ever since the 31-year-old’s brutalised body was discovered at the state-run hospital on August 9 last year.
Judge Anirban Das of the Additional District and Sessions Court had on Saturday convicted Sanjay Roy, a Kolkata Police civic volunteer, in the crime. On Monday, Judge Das sentenced Roy to life imprisonment till death and ordered the Bengal government to pay Rs 17 lakh as compensation to the victim’s parents.
The court ruled that the crime did not meet the “rarest of the rare” criterion reserved for capital punishment in India.
“An on-duty doctor was raped and murdered at her workplace and the court says it is not rarest of rare? When and where has such a crime happened before? At least I have not heard about an incident like this,” Aniket Mahato, a junior doctor at RG Kar and a prominent face of the protests, told The Telegraph Online.
He said the doctors would continue their protest till justice was done.
“The protest will go on even in future because our demands are clear: who are the others involved in this case? Why is the supplementary chargesheet not being filed? Why are criminal proceedings not being taken up against Sandip Ghosh? We need answers to these questions as well. We are not satisfied with this sentence as we wish to know the motive behind this and who is being hidden by the supplementary chargesheet not being filed,” he said.
Rahul Hazra, a final-year MBBS student at Midnapore Medical College, said that he did not believe that Roy acted alone
“I am not at all satisfied with this sentence and I refuse to believe that Sanjay Roy has committed the heinous crime alone. Even the people who took part with me in the protests refuse to believe it,” Hazra told The Telegraph Online.
He said even for argument’s sake even if one accepts that Sanjay Roy committed the crime alone, he should have been given the death penalty.
“An on-duty doctor was raped and murdered. There is no security in such a big, state-run hospital. On top of that, there are still so many rackets being run at different levels in the medical fraternity; because of this, common students like us have to suffer. Nobody can control such a situation apart from the people in power,” said Hazra.
The doctors said that they would meet and decide on the future course of action.
“All we learnt from this was that justice is not given by the legal system,” Hazra said.
Dr. Anik Das, a third-year postgraduate trainee at Midnapore Medical College, mirrored his colleagues’ disappointment.
“If this crime is not the rarest of rare, then I do not know what is. This is extremely disappointing, and I hope this can be challenged for the better in higher courts. Our protests will continue,” he said.
The rape and murder at RG Kar had sparked protests unprecedented even for Kolkata, a city known for protests. Many of the activists who led such protests mirrored the disappointment of the victim’s family.
“Expecting the judiciary to keep this case under active supervision to identify every single culprit who is responsible for the heinous crime, no matter how 'known' they might be,” Rimjhim Sinha, a social researcher whose call to Reclaim the Night had drawn hundreds of thousands of common people to the streets to protest the RG Kar horror, told The Telegraph Online after Roy’s sentence was pronounced.
“Legal intervention is an important side of redress, but that isn't enough. We need actionable social change, along with policy-level changes,” Sinha said.
“For us, justice does not end with the verdict given in one case,” she added. “In a country like ours, where judges participate in victim-blaming and the police gang-rape an already raped complainant at the police station, justice will not be properly served until structural changes are brought into the system. The first step might be achieved when women will be seen as humans instead of property, product, or in the binary of goddess or slut. This is a long-term struggle.”