AA Edit | R.G. Kar case: Justice served
The conviction and sentencing to life of the lone accused in the case of the rape and brutal murder of a post-graduate medical student on duty at R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital bring to a close the cries for justice the medical community and the general public have raised since it happened on August 9, 2024. However, the larger question of security of medical professionals and their institutions remains a subject across India that needs urgent remedial measures.
The news of the gruesome incident involving a medico in her own institution shocked the conscience of the nation and the initial laxity the Kolkata police displayed made people irrespective of their political affiliations restive. The failure of the medical college authorities and the police to secure the scene of the crime was baffling while the vandalism by a few thousand goons on the campus a week later was indigestible. Though the Kolkata police arrested the culprit, who was associated with the police department, the unprecedented events forced the Calcutta high court to engage the CBI in the investigation of the case. It must be remembered that the CBI made no new findings other than those made by the state police, though the victim’s colleagues and near ones suspected the role of more than one person in the incident.
That the incident became a political football is the most unfortunate of all, and that game continues. It is understandable that the immediate relatives of the girl would want capital punishment for the culprit but it does not behove the chief minister to throw in her weight behind the demand and attempt to get political mileage out of it. The court has spoken its mind; constitutional institutions must respect it.
The rape-murder bared the sorry state of security affairs in our medical institutions, forcing the Supreme Court to set up an expert panel to study the issue and suggest corrective measures. It is understood that the panel has submitted its recommendations. The governments at the Centre and in the states must waste no time to start working on it and put in place systems so that the Kolkata episode would have a repeat in no Indian institution.