New Delhi – Thousands of angry students and other protesters marched through the streets of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata in West Bengal state on Tuesday, demanding justice. The doctor who was brutally raped and killed. at a city hospital earlier this month.
Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the protesters who were marching towards the state secretariat building to demand the resignation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whom they accused of wrongdoing. Accused of driving in style.
Indian TV networks aired videos showing protesters climbing barricades on the Howrah Bridge, while police used water cannons to disperse them.
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On August 9, the brutal body of a 31-year-old doctor was found with multiple injuries in a lecture hall of the government-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. In the night shift when he was attacked. An autopsy confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted and suffered multiple injuries before she died, suggesting that she resisted and was tortured before being killed.
Kolkata police arrested a volunteer member of the force on August 10 and charged him with rape and murder, but the brutality of the case has sparked outrage across the country, with medical experts across the country They are demanding jobs and citizens are demanding protection of women. A country with a shameful record of rape.
Doctors at government hospitals across India refused to work last week, withdrawing all but emergency patients as part of a phase-out. National strike On rape and murder.
Kolkata police had turned the city into a virtual fortress ahead of Tuesday's planned protest, blocking all roads leading to the state secretariat and deploying 6,000 personnel for a full riot. Police said they had not given permission for the protest march, and the Trinamool Congress party, which is in power in West Bengal state, alleged it was an attempt by opposition parties to foment unrest in the city.
Police clashed with protesters on Tuesday morning when some of the crowd managed to scale the barricades, but the protesters were stopped before they could reach the state secretariat.
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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the opposition in West Bengal, claimed that scores of students were injured during clashes with the police on Tuesday and called a fresh 12-hour general strike in the state on Wednesday to retaliate. Called.
India's federal Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), tasked with investigating the Kolkata rape-murders, last week conducted a polygraph test on prime suspect Sanjay Roy, the results of which were released on Tuesday. were gone Many in the country hope the findings will shed new light on whether other people may have been involved in the attack, as suggested by the victim's father.
According to the latest data available from the National Crime Records Bureau, around 90 rapes were reported every day in India in 2022. Experts believe the actual number may be much higher, as many rapes go unreported due to the stigma surrounding sexual violence and distrust of police investigations. Conviction rates remain low, with many cases lingering for years in India's overwhelmed criminal justice system.