An Indian court docket on Monday sentenced to life in jail the person convicted of raping and murdering a trainee physician in Kolkata, sparing him the dying penalty in a case that was a chilling instance of how the nation stays unsafe for ladies.
The killing in August led to months of protests and political turmoil within the state of West Bengal, of which Kolkata, previously Calcutta, is the capital.
India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, its equal of the F.B.I., had requested the court docket at hand down a dying penalty for Sanjay Roy, the perpetrator. So had the sufferer’s household, and the highly effective chief minister of the state, Mamata Banerjee.
However the court docket dominated that Mr. Roy’s crimes didn’t meet the “rarest of the uncommon” customary used to justify executing these convicted of capital offenses.
Rekha Sharma, a former chief of the Nationwide Fee for Girls and a member of Parliament, informed an Indian information company that “the sufferer’s household and all of us are actually unhappy” that Mr. Roy averted the dying penalty. A member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s get together, she blamed the sentence on shortcomings of the Kolkata Police, who reply to Ms. Banerjee.
Earlier than the sentencing, Mr. Roy, who had served as a volunteer with the Kolkata Police, stated he was not responsible. “I haven’t carried out this. I’ve been framed,” he informed the court docket on Monday. Months in the past, he had stated that the written confessions he gave to police had been obtained by pressure.
Particulars in regards to the crime had been murky for a number of days after the physique of the 31-year-old sufferer was present in a seminar corridor at a college hospital in Kolkata. They had been additionally horrific, in a approach that recalled a infamous case of rape and homicide in New Delhi in December 2012 that additionally led to mass protests and, finally, to 4 hangings.
Within the Kolkata case, the junior physician had gone to sleep on a mattress she had positioned on the ground within the early hours of Aug. 9, after a grueling hospital shift. After her physique was found, the authorities stated she had been raped and strangled. Police arrested Mr. Roy after he was recognized in CCTV footage coming into the constructing earlier than the assault and sporting headphones that had been discovered on the crime scene.
The general public response was extraordinary, and escalated over the subsequent few months. Hundreds of docs throughout the town went on strike to demand safer working situations. They had been joined by many 1000’s of Indians, incensed at what they thought to be callous therapy of the sufferer’s household and efforts at a cover-up.
“Individuals are satisfied that this was linked with wholesale corruption within the medical school,” stated Jawhar Sircar, a former civil servant who joined Ms. Banerjee’s political get together however resigned in September over what he stated was graft underneath her rule, and the position that it appeared to play within the Kolkata hospital rape and homicide case.
A spokesperson for Ms. Banerjee, considered one of Mr. Modi’s most vocal rivals, greeted the sentencing by posting on social media that the politician and the Kolkata police had been vindicated by the decision. However many protesters, Mr. Sircar added, had taken to the streets to rally in opposition to what they perceived as corruption underneath her lengthy stint as chief minister of West Bengal.
And now, after the sentencing, the widespread feeling, Mr. Sircar stated, was that “by choosing this man, and punishing him, solely partial justice has been carried out.”
