The horror of the Hathras gang rape and the events that followed would seem exaggerated in films but were part of the reality in India, a teacher said at a protest meeting in Calcutta on Thursday.

“First the horror of the assault, then cops burning her body in the dead of the night without her parents. Had this been a film, we would have called it exaggeration. But this has become the reality,” said Subhanil Chowdhury, who teaches economics at the Institute of Development Studies.

The meeting, attended by “democratic-minded citizens”, demanded justice for the Hathras victim and slammed the “unjust acquittal of the conspirators” of Babri Masjid demolition.

The protesters met near the Park Street Metro station under the Park Street flyover and walked till the Gandhi statue on Mayo Road. On the eve of the 151st birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation, the marchers called for unity among citizens to fight the “politics of hate and violence”.

“It is important to realise why we are on the road. Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992…. Around 3,000 Indians were killed in riots in the run-up to and after the demolition. Today, those behind the atrocities… have been acquitted. If people responsible for the death of 3,000 Indians go scot-free, then we — you and I — can get killed anytime,” said Faridul Islam of the No-NRC movement.

Members of a string of organisations that were at the forefront of the rallies against the troika of Citizenship Amendment Act, National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens in the city before the pandemic attended the meeting on Thursday.

The participants shouted their lungs out. Slogans of “hum ek hain” rang the air as the protesters marched along JL Nehru Road and Mayo Road.

One of the posters depicted a severed tongue. The Hathras victim had her tongue severed, allegedly by her tormentors. “Whose tongue is it? Cannot say? Could it be yours?” asked the poster.

Kasturi Basu, a documentary filmmaker and activist, spoke of the “state of Indian judiciary”.

“A special CBI court was about to deliver its judgement in a 28-year-old, extremely important case. Our judicial system has become such that before the judgement, people presumed that all the accused would be acquitted. Why? Because in an earlier verdict, the Supreme Court gave permission to build a Ram Mandir from the rubble of a mosque that was demolished by a criminal conspiracy, by an assembly of thousands.”