Call for better safety measures as ‘civic volunteer’ arrested after attack on female trainee doctor in Kolkata
Doctors at government hospitals in several Indian states have gone on strike in a protest after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata on Friday.
The 31-year-old woman was attacked at the state-run RG Kar medical college, where she was a resident doctor, after she went to rest in a seminar room following dinner with colleagues. Her brutalised body was found with multiple injuries and an autopsy confirmed sexual assault and homicide.
On Saturday police arrested Sanjay Roy, a “civic volunteer” at the hospital, in connection with the attack. Roy’s duties were unclear but local media reports said he operated in part as a tout, helping to speed up admissions for patients in return for money.
Protests by doctors demanding justice and better workplace security that initially began in Kolkata, in West Bengal, have now spread to other parts of the country.
Makes me curious about how common these incidents actually are. It’s pretty easy to think somethings a widespread epidemic from sensational reporting on it, but have it actually not be common at all, at least when compared to the population or other causes of death.
According to wikipedia, there were 1,358 people who died in the US from mass shootings between 2006 and 2017, so about 113 people per year. For comparison, the US had 430,934 deaths from car wrecks over that same period, so about 35,911 deaths per year. So you’re over 300 times more likely to die from a car wreck than a mass shooting (which would bring up the question of if you would be willing to visit a country with cars if you’re unwilling to visit the US due to mass shooting fears).
With india, I’m curious if it’s the same thing, where just the scope and size of the country makes it easy to paint a bad narrative when in reality things aren’t so bad. On the other hand, a lot of the really bad rape stories to come out of india involve multiple rapes happening to the same person (like that recent story where a woman was gang raped, went to the hospital, and got raped by a doctor at the hospital). When it happens multiple times to one person like that from different sources, it feels a lot more like a widespread issue than just random cases of bad individuals doing bad things.