A brutal rape and murder of a young doctor at a medical college and hospital in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, has triggered a series of protests that have spread beyond the eastern Indian state. A perpetual theater of protests and demonstrations, the city is demanding the resignation of veteran politician Mamata Banerjee, currently the only woman heading one of India’s 28 states.
As chief minister, her 50-year-old political career is at stake but the veteran spinner of public opinion is not giving up – and has joined the protests herself. A powerhouse of Indian politics, not only has she survived predictions of a thousand political deaths, but she is periodically mentioned as a future prime ministerial candidate.
The crime and the protest
The protests are a reaction to the rape and brutal murder of a young doctor in the R.G. Kar Medical College in Kolkata on August 9, 2024.
Authorities informed the doctor’s parents that their daughter was found dead at her medical institute. At the hospital, the father found his daughter’s corpse lying naked, with her body bearing signs of brutality.
Initial investigations revealed that she had been raped and killed following a 36-hour shift. CCTV footage showed a civic volunteer at the hospital entering the same room, and police arrested him.
Public reaction was swift in Kolkata, demanding justice for the deceased and safety for women in the country. It began with demonstrations at the hospital campus by the colleagues of the deceased.
Doctors and medical unions across India threatened protests, even drawing the attention of the Supreme Court, which set up a task force for the protection of women medics. Nobody knows what would happen if all three million doctors in India went on a complete strike in a nation of 1.48 billion and poor medical infrastructure in non-urban areas.
The largest set of protests involved a march called “Women Reclaim the Night,” dramatically organized at the zero hour of August 15, India’s Independence Day.
At the Kolkata protest, for instance, vast crowds converged under a single slogan in Bengali, “Women reclaim the night,” and next to it the Kurdish phrase popularized in the 2022 protests by Iranian women over the custodial death of Mahsa Amini: “Jin Jiyan Azadi” (Women, Life, Freedom).
What are they protesting
The street anger has several causes. Details of forensic reports have appeared on social media, with the graphic detail leading to conspiracy theories of a cover-up and allegations that there was more than one culprit.
These have been further fueled by rumors of mismanagement and corruption at the medical college. Amid the outcry, the college principal was blamed for poor management and transferred to a different medical college. This led to rumors that he was politically connected to Banerjee’s political party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Additionally, the protests are being led by increased demands by women for safety at workplaces and elsewhere.
The December 2012 rape and brutal murder of a young woman dubbed ‘Nirbhaya’ in New Delhi by five men and a minor led to widespread protests through India. The demonstrations ultimately ended the career of another veteran female politician, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, after she (and others) offered advice to women on how to conduct and protect themselves.
One of the five men was found dead in jail and the remaining four were executed in 2020. The minor served time under juvenile laws.
In 2019, four men raped and killed a young veterinarian in Hyderabad. The men were arrested and later gunned down when police took them to the crime scene ostensibly for a re-enactment. Police claimed self-defense but it was widely seen as a staged encounter – with overwhelming public approval.
Both these incidents have shown that both judicial and alleged extrajudicial executions have not served as a deterrent to make India safe for women.
Another horrific case was the 1973 rape of a young nurse by a colleague at her hospital. It left her in a coma and she spent 42 years in the same hospital in a vegetative state before she died of pneumonia after a failed petition to the Supreme Court for a ‘mercy killing’.
Eerily, all victims were linked to the medical profession: a nurse in 1973, a physiotherapist in 2012, a veterinarian in 2019, and a practising doctor in 2024.
Safety, not protection
Protesters made it clear that they were not demanding protection but safety from sexual assault of any kind. The truth is, rape and sexual assault are tools of violence and oppression in India. It is not easy to protest against rape and sexual assault in socio-economically backward states such as Uttar Pradesh, where authorities have, in the past, shut down districts over fears of protests by marginalized groups.
This growing demand for safety has also seen Indian women coming out during the global ‘MeToo’ movement. Women in media, academics, entertainment, corporate jobs, and other workplaces in India named and shamed colleagues and bosses who had made sexual advances or sexually assaulted them.
Accusations have been made against celebrities, ministers, former chief justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, and the heads of religious sects. Two such religious figures, with millions of followers, are currently serving sentences for rape convictions though they manage to continue getting parole.
Even West Bengal’s governor (the constitutional head of a state representing the federal union) was earlier this year accused of sexual assault by a worker at his official residence. Following the August 9 incident, the same gentleman met protesting doctors to assure them of justice.
No stranger to protests
Kolkata is no stranger to protest marches, rallies, vigils and demonstrations in solidarity with global causes. An event in Central Asia, Latin America, Europe or Africa could trigger a demonstration in some form; a World Cup win by Argentina or Brazil has thrown the city into a night of traffic-paralysing celebration.
The most recent protests were in solidarity with the citizens of Bangladesh, who are fellow Bengalis. West Bengal closely followed the fall of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and cheered on the protesting students. It did not matter that a large section of Bangladeshis openly blamed India for stage-managing elections and keeping Hasina in power. The economies of the two Bengals also share close ties.
Partition displaced a number of East Bengalis (as Bangladesh was once known) to West Bengal. The tension played out through a bitter football rivalry of two local teams that continues to promise high-tension moments. On August 18, with the protests over the doctor’s rape and murder, fans of both football teams united in protests outside the football stadium and proceeded on a long march to demonstrate against the crime.
The protests have unleashed anger against the police investigation. Long-suppressed anger against Mamta Banerjee-led party has spilled onto the street, and analysts predict that this could cost her the next state election, which is scheduled for May 2026.
Giant slayer
Banerjee is known as Didi (elder sister) to the media, her constituents and party workers, and has survived an extraordinary share of political crises.
In the 2021 state elections, poll pundits, including left-leaning analysts, declared that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party would win. Banerjee famously hobbled into the fray with a fractured leg in a cast and wooed female voters to sail back into power.
She is battle-scarred with a career built through protests and demonstrations in opposition to her predecessor in government – the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), which ruled Bengal for 35 years through a leftist coalition.
In the 1970s, Banerjee joined the Indian National Congress party as a student leader. A cult grew around her as she took her ‘street-fighter’ reputation to electoral politics. Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi gave her her first ticket to parliamentary politics. The young upstart disrupted the elite old boys club of Bengali men and reinforced the cult around her.
By the 1990s, Banerjee had been repeatedly manhandled by the police and became the face of the Congress party in Bengal. The old men didn’t like it and she left to form her own party (the TMC). A decade later, she won the state elections, for the first time providing an alternative to the ruling Left Front.
Banerjee, however, never dropped her role as an opposition leader. While serving as chief minister, she has continuously opposed the Narendra Modi-led BJP federal government – even while her own TMC was frequently criticized for corruption and nepotism.
As she began her reign, she publicly called her detractors – even non-affiliated people – ‘Maoists’, a reference to left-wing extremists who once led an armed rebellion that spread to other states. She famously jailed a professor of a prominent university for sharing a political cartoon of her. Freedom of speech came at a premium and the current protests are an outpouring of pent-up anger against her style of governance.
Many accuse Banerjee’s party colleagues of corruption and nepotism and a reign of violence that peaks during elections. Within a couple of years of assuming power, her legislators were accused of Ponzi scams that earned millions of dollars from unsuspecting citizens. In the middle of that crisis, a journalist posed as a corporate liaison officer and secretly recorded some of her colleagues accepting kickbacks for ‘favors’ to corporations.
In March 2024, the Supreme Court changed political contribution rules and forced an Indian bank to reveal anonymous donations received by political parties, known as ‘electoral bonds’. Her party has only ruled West Bengal and its 100 million people but the TMC was the second-highest recipient of corporate donations after the BJP.
Banerjee’s support for secular politics and opposition to right-wing politics has ensured her popularity in India. In the June 2024 parliamentary election, the TMC took seats from the BJP in West Bengal. Just before the election, she was admitted to a hospital with a head injury.
But now, for the first time, Banerjee appears clueless and on the defensive when a mass protest mobilizes against her.
Initially, the Kolkata Police were investigating the rape and murder of the doctor, and its commissioner, buckling under mounting public pressure, went on the defensive, blaming the media and politics. Yet Banerjee has not removed him. The public are calling for the resignation of both.
The state High Court transferred the case to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), an agency outside of Banerjee’s writ. That same night, during the “Women Reclaim the Night” protest, a mob of local goons stormed the R.G. Kar hospital premises and vandalized it before the CBI could take charge of the crime scene. Kolkata Police constables posted at the crime scene took refuge in washroom stalls.
Banerjee seized the opportunity and immediately hit the streets in protest along with female leaders of her party, to the surprise of all. It was unclear against whom she was protesting since the public was angry at her governance.
Mamata Banerjee’s detractors want to write her off with this crisis. She has survived a thousand such political death penalties in the past 50 years.