Residents of gated communities were at the forefront of several protest meets that made the eve of this Independence Day unprecedented.

Residents of a housing society near Haldiram off VIP Road gathered at the community hall before setting out to Baguiati, one of the protest sites.

It included Debalina Lahiri, 39, with her two children, her one-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son.

“I don’t expect the perpetrator to have a conscience but why will the system be so lenient that a perpetrator will not be scared of punishment before committing such a heinous crime,” said Lahiri.

“The fact such an incident happened in a hospital is something that scares me. A hospital is a place where there are women and children and not always in their senses. So, it makes them vulnerable, too,” she said.

Rumi Mukherjee and her teenage daughter, in Class XI, also joined the Baguiati protest.

“When it is a mass movement like this it makes us feel united in our cause. We are not alone and that gives the movement strength,” said Mukherjee.

More than 2,000 people had assembled at the Ruby intersection by 11pm on Wednesday. A bulk of the crowd was made up of residents of Avishikta, Greenwood Nook and other housing complexes in the East Kolkata Township Project that dot the neighbourhood on and off EM Bypass.

“When we started mobilising people, my number was shared on social media. Within a couple of hours, I received more than 200 calls,” said Soma Roy Karmakar, one of the organisers and a gender rights activist.

The gathering had several members of the third gender.

More than 1,500 people assembled at the Kamalgazi intersection on the city’s southern fringes under the banner of Spirit of Southern Bypass. The participants came from more than 25 gated communities.

Protesters came with candles and black badges. The mobilisation was done via WhatsApp. There was a set of guidelines barring any kind of political sloganeering or political posters and banners.

In New Town, too, residents of multiple gated communities were at the forefront of the campaign.

Many of them this newspaper spoke to said that they have often been labelled as impervious to things as they stay inside gated communities and rarely step out to take part in protests. They wanted to shed the perception.

Sukla Chatterjee, a resident of DLF Elita Garden Vista in New Town’s Action Area III, joined the protest with her college-going daughter Sahana and husband Subroto.

“We have started to feel very unsafe in the city given the horrific nature of the crime that has taken place inside a government hospital. My daughter is studying in college and often returns home alone at night,” said Chatterjee who runs a dance school in New Town.

Dina Dutta Sarkar, a resident of Rosedale Garden, a gated community opposite the St Xavier’s University campus, said she and several of her neighbours marched inside the housing complex before setting out for the vigil at the Kolkata Gate.

The attack on RG Kar in the early hours of Thursday had her in disbelief.

“Last night, we felt safe as there were thousands at the gathering. Post midnight, after news of the hospital being vandalised by groups started trickling in, we again felt helpless and disbanded fearing that we, too, could be attacked,” said Sarkar.

Ananya Kar, who stays in a housing complex near Kalikapur, said she had stepped out with her sister Anwesha to join the protest at the Ruby intersection.

“Both of us are working and we have to travel alone. The RG Kar episode has left an indelible mark on us. We are shocked at the turn of events on Thursday night and are left wondering who will ensure the safety of women if goons have a free run in front of policemen,” said Kar.