A volunteer police officer from India has been found guilty of raping and murdering a 31-year-old doctor at a hospital in eastern Kolkata, Reuters reports. The trial of this crime was accelerated and the criminal faces life imprisonment or the death penalty. The crime sparked nationwide outrage over the lack of safety for women in India.
A 31-year-old medical student was assaulted and killed on August 9 last year at the government hospital under the Kolkata Medical College. The woman slept on the carpet in the lecture hall after a 36-hour shift because there were no rest rooms for doctors at the facility where she worked, her colleagues told Reuters.
After the barbaric crime, other doctors did not work for several weeks. During this time, they protested to seek justice for him and better security in public hospitals. The director of the medical school, where the crime took place, resigned from his post.
Reuters news agency obtained a medical report dated August 9, according to which the victim was bleeding from the eyes and mouth, and had injuries to his legs, abdomen, joints, right hand and finger.
The accused, Sanjay Roy, had declared in November that he was “absolutely innocent” and that he was facing contempt. He repeated this in court on Saturday, claiming: “I didn’t do it.”
His defense attorneys stated that there are obvious discrepancies in the investigation and inspection reports. The judge said circumstantial evidence supported the charges against Roy, and the sentence to be announced Monday would range from life in prison to the death penalty.
Activists expressed solidarity with the victim outside the court in Kolkata, India
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– Our daughter could not meet such a terrible end at the hands of a man.
The parents of the victim, whose name cannot be disclosed according to local laws, expressed dissatisfaction with the course of the investigation. According to them, the crime could not have been committed by just one person. “Our daughter could not have suffered such a terrible fate at the hands of one man,” her father said. He added that “we will suffer until all the guilty are punished.”
As Reuters reported, the federal police of India, which investigated this case, called this crime “the rarest of all”. Several doctors shouted slogans of solidarity with the victim in front of the court. Dr Aniket Mahato, a spokesman for the junior doctors, said the street protests would continue “until justice is served”.
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Activists expressed solidarity with the victim outside the court in Kolkata, India
More than 200 armed police officers were waiting for the verdict in front of the court. As described by Reuters, judicial sources indicate that the investigation has called 128 witnesses, 51 of whom were interviewed during the accelerated trial, which began on November 11 last year.
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Main photo source: PAP/EPA/PIYAL ADHIKARY
