Five years ago, the government of West Bengal state in India vowed to combat violence against doctors. It assured public hospitals of enhanced security measures, including female guards for female physicians and controlled access points, as per an internal government memo obtained by Reuters. However, none of these promises were fulfilled at the public hospital where a young female doctor was sexually assaulted and murdered on August 9, allegedly by a police volunteer, according to four trainee doctors.
In the days preceding the homicide-assault, which sparked nationwide outrage and a doctors' strike, only two male guards were stationed at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, supplemented by a few CCTV cameras that did not fully cover the extensive grounds, the trainees stated. One of the doors of the lecture hall, where the doctor had been resting during a 36-hour shift when she was attacked, lacked a lock, said two other trainee doctors who had also slept there. The air conditioning in the designated break room had malfunctioned, they added.
After two doctors at a different hospital were assaulted by a patient's relatives in 2019, West Bengal had pledged to install "effective security equipment and systems," regulate entry and exit to hospital premises, and create a compensation policy for assaulted staff, according to the state health department memo dated June 17, 2019. The two-page document, reported by Reuters for the first time, was prepared after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met with trainee doctors protesting the attack on their colleagues as a "record note" of the interaction. The memo did not specify to whom it was addressed.
Banerjee had instructed officials to take "effective and prompt" action "within a specified timeframe," according to the document, which did not detail the preparation period. "If those measures had been taken, this incident may never have happened," said Dr Riya Bera, a postgraduate trainee at RG Kar, referring to her colleague's death. Asked about the 2019 assurances, West Bengal Health Secretary N S Nigam said the Covid-19 pandemic had delayed improvements for two years but "a lot" had been done since 2021, including enhancing CCTV coverage and employing private security in hospitals.
Banerjee on August 28 announced that $12 million would be allocated to start work on improvements such as better lighting in health facilities, resting spaces, and female security staff. The chief minister's office, as well as RG Kar hospital, did not respond to calls seeking comment. Authorities continue to investigate the August 9 incident, for which no charges have yet been filed.
The assault on the doctor in Kolkata, whose identity cannot be disclosed under local laws, evoked memories of the 2012 gang rape of a physiotherapist in a Delhi bus, which shook India with anger and triggered protests. Reuters interviewed 14 female doctors at government hospitals in West Bengal and elsewhere in India about their challenges in a country where women's safety is a persistent concern. They described poor working conditions, including hostile treatment from patient families and having to sleep on benches in dimly-lit corridors due to a lack of rest facilities.
Some doctors recounted napping in break rooms with no locks during lengthy shifts, only to have people intrude. Others described facing male patients who photographed them without consent, claiming they were documenting evidence of their treatment. Indian Medical Association (IMA) president RV Asokan noted that while the August 9 homicide-assault seemed exceptional in its brutality, "the fact that anybody can walk in shows the vulnerability of the place, and this when more and more women are joining the profession."
Some doctors have taken self-defense measures: a doctor at a hospital in Odisha state, neighboring West Bengal, said her father gave her a knife to fend off potential attackers. Dr Gauri Seth, a postgraduate trainee at Medical College, Kolkata, said that after the August 9 incident, she would not go on duty again without carrying a pepper spray or scalpel to defend herself. About 60% of India's doctors are female, and three-quarters of them have reported being victims of verbal abuse, physical attacks, and other harassment while on duty, according to the IMA, the nation's largest group of physicians.
Due to ingrained patriarchal attitudes and biases, relatives of patients are more likely to challenge women medical professionals...(they) also face different forms of sexual violence at the workplace," India's Supreme Court wrote in an August 20 ruling ordering the creation of a taskforce on medical workers' safety. India introduced stringent laws governing crimes against women following the 2012 Delhi gang rape, including expanding the definition of rape to include all penetration without consent, as well as criminalizing voyeurism and stalking. However, the situation remains dire, according to activists and government data.
Almost 450,000 crimes against women were reported in 2022 — the most recent year for which data is available — up four percent on 2021, government data show. More than seven percent of the alleged crimes were rape-related. Lawyer and rights activist Vrinda Grover attributed the issue to inadequate training for police investigators and broader cultural problems. "What is very disturbing in this case is the ordinariness of what the victim was doing: she was in her workplace," she said. "There is something wrong with a society where such conduct is so commonplace."
The 31-year-old Kolkata physician, whose battered, half-naked body was found by colleagues, had always aspired to be a doctor, family members and friends said. "When I bumped into her last year, she told me she was very happy and was living her dream," said Somojit Moulik, who had studied with the victim in medical school. When Reuters visited the victim's family home, the nameplate bore only her name with the prefix Dr, indicating how highly her relatives valued her achievements.
Her aunt said in an interview that her niece had been set to marry a physician she had studied with later this year, and that she had not complained about safety issues at work. But in the wake of her death, colleagues are speaking out. Dr Shreya Shaw, a postgraduate trainee at RG Kar hospital, said she found two strangers shaking her awake at around 3am when she was sleeping in a designated rest room, which did not have locks. "It was initially quite scary to wake up to unknown men in the dark," she said, adding that she was shocked the patients could enter the floor where she was resting without being stopped.
