Early last month, a 31-year-old trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College was midway through a 36-hour shift when she took a break to eat a late dinner with her colleagues around 2 am local time. After the meal, they left her alone in the seminar room, where she was reportedly going to rest because there were no facilities for exhausted doctors. The next morning, her body was found with signs of extreme sexual abuse. Hospital administrators told her family that she had committed suicide, but when her parents – who had toiled and saved to send their only child to medical school – saw the body, it was beyond evident that she had been tortured and murdered. Her father, a tailor, had worried about her safety traveling home late at night after her shifts and had borrowed money to buy a car. “I wanted her to be safe on the roads at night,” her father said, “but she wasn’t even safe at the hospital as a doctor on duty.” ….more
