Holding candles, hundreds of thousands of women marched through the night in cities across India to protest the brutal rape and murder of a young female doctor in a hospital that has fuelled anger over a lack of safety for women despite tough new laws.
A 31-year old trainee doctor was raped and murdered inside the medical college in Kolkata where she worked on Friday, triggering nationwide protests among doctors and drawing parallels to the notorious gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012.
"We have come here to demand justice because even I have a daughter. I am scared to send her anywhere...I am scared to send my daughter to study," said Rinky Ghosh, who took part in a protest in Kolkata.
"So I am here today because something ... must be done, this injustice must stop."
The doctor had retired to sleep on a piece of carpet in a seminar room in the RG Kar Medical College after a marathon 36-hour shift, given the lack of dorms or resting rooms for doctors in the premises, her colleagues told Reuters.
She was found dead on Friday, with police saying she had been raped and murdered, and a police volunteer was subsequently arrested in connection with the crime.
Many government hospitals in cities across India suspended all services except emergency departments this week as junior doctors sat outside in protest, demanding justice.
In protests called "Reclaim the Night", women marched across several Indian cities from midnight on Wednesday, on the eve of the country's 78th Independence Day, to protest against the lack of safety for women in India, especially at night.
"As a society, we have to think about the atrocities being committed against our mothers, daughters and sisters. There is outrage against this in the country. I can feel this outrage," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an Independence Day address to the nation on Thursday.
The 2012 Delhi rape case was seen as a turning point in attitudes towards women's safety in Indian society.
It triggered huge protests and was the catalyst for rapid change in laws tackling crimes against women.
These included fast-track courts for swifter convictions in such cases, but protesters say a decade on, the situation for women has not improved.
"This horrific incident has once again reminded us that women disproportionately bear the weight of ensuring their own safety," Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt said in a post on her Instagram page, which has more than 85 million followers.
Doctors in India's crowded and often squalid government hospitals have long complained of being overworked and underpaid, and say not enough is done to curb violence levelled at them by people angered over the medical care on offer.
Crimes against women in India rose four per cent in 2022 from the previous year, data from the National Crime Records Bureau, released in late 2023, showed.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
