Written By: Reshmi Dasgupta
News18.com
Last Updated: August 17, 2024, 11:37 IST
New Delhi, India
Protesters at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital during the 'Reclaim the Night' march against the alleged rape and murder of a trainee doctor, in Kolkata on August 15. (Image: PTI)
That the Police Commissioner of Kolkata—a post that carries considerable social and historical heft in that city—has come out swinging, defending the actions of the local police is telling. But even more telling is the fact that a rampaging mob was allowed by his men to swarm into RG Kar Hospital while thousands of residents of Kolkata were rallying peacefully to “reclaim the night" for women. Is Kolkata Police, set up in 1856, that incompetent? Surely not.
Yet, the Calcutta High Court obviously has serious reservations about the ability of this police force to thoroughly investigate the rape and murder of the young woman doctor that has convulsed the entire state. And it would seem that the Hon’ble justices had good reason to be sceptical after the scenes of chaos unfolded live on TV with the Kolkata Police unable and maybe even unwilling to contain the mayhem, putting a big question mark on their impartiality.
Had the media, national and local, not been present, the police and state authorities’ initial canard that the protestors rather than a mob with its own agenda had stormed the scene of the rape-murder of a doctor, may just have carried the day. Only, the mob even broke the stage and shelter erected by the protesting student-doctors of the medical college. That does not gel with the notion that the vandalism was done by a section of the peaceful protesters.
Cameras recorded that it was a mob of outsiders, using the night’s protest as an excuse to access the crime scene and vandalise it. And as students, protestors and even nursing staff of RG Kar have recounted (and recorded), the........