Kolkata Horror – Fight Back Against Sexual Violence and Exploitation

Warning: This article discusses sexual violence of an extreme nature, which may be triggering.

The gruesome rape and murder of Dr Moumita Debnath has shocked the world and thrown India’s brutal rape culture into the spotlight once again. Massive protests have broken out across the country, which, while numerically still inferior to the Nirbhaya movement, have marked a qualitative breakthrough in the fight against sexual violence. Millions of people have taken to the streets across India this week: not just in West Bengal, not just in major metropolitan areas, but even in small villages as far away as Tamil Nadu. The Indian Medical Association has staged a 24-hour strike and suspended all outpatient services in both public and private hospitals from 6am to 6am on August 17-18. Doctors, students and ordinary women and men are outraged not only by the gruesome nature of the case but also by the hypocritical and repressive response of the ruling class.

Dr. Debnath’s safety was compromised in several ways by both the hospital administration and the police. To begin with, when she was attacked, she was resting in an empty conference room after a gruelling 36-hour shift – as there are no suitable, safe and well-equipped rooms in the hospital for doctors to rest between shifts. At least one of her attackers was allowed into the building due to lax security regulations, despite her not having the correct credentials. CCTV cameras were installed but were not available. Furthermore, the medical reports suggest that she was not attacked by any of the multiple men, and the hospital’s haste to label her death as suicide was completely absurd. The police failed to cordon off the area, and the hospital itself clearly tampered with evidence before and during the investigation in the name of “renovation”.

However, this is not even the only case of sexual abuse that has taken place at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. Take the 2001 case of Soumitra Biswas, a student who threatened to expose a pornography ring in the college. It was an open secret at the time that a group of male students were filming themselves having sex with prostitutes on campus and, when they were unavailable, dead bodies from the hospital. According to student testimonies, Biswas was the only student to be caught in this scam after a photo of his classmate’s face was superimposed on an image of a naked corpse. His death showed clear signs of murder: the door to his room was broken open, a handkerchief was shoved down his throat and the cord with which he was strangled was found to be too short to hang himself. However, the police ruled it a suicide and despite finding film equipment in the adjoining room, no investigation was conducted into the allegations that were clearly repeated by other students of the college.

Dr Sandip Ghosh, the principal of the medical college, had been transferred twice in the past year, had been sacked from Calcutta National Medical College over corruption allegations and was known to the neighbours as a serial killer. His connections in the TMC had saved him from an ignominious dismissal several times and after his dismissal from RG Kar following the backlash against his role (he was the one who hastily floated the ‘suicide’ theory and made scandalous remarks about the victim), he was given a new cushy job within hours. Critics have labelled Dr Ghosh as a corrupt bureaucrat who used mafia-like tactics to maintain his own power in the medical profession.

Of course, this situation is familiar to any woman who has worked in academia. Powerful men systematically abuse women and treat elite professionals as their own personal harem. Women who stand up to this often have no recourse, not even through the police and the legal system, a system whose operators are often open and unashamed about their corrupt actions and power brokering, a kind of babu system that protects the elite from the consequences of their own actions instead of protecting women and other vulnerable people from oppression and exploitation.

Dr. Debnath’s case was neither an outlier nor an exception. Every day, women in India and around the world are confronted with the reality of patriarchal rape culture; its insidiousness infects every aspect of life. Constantly looking over your shoulder to see if a man is following you into a deserted place, worrying whether a man’s smile is just friendly or conceals a sinister intent, having to “check in” with friends and share location data to stay safe during simple car journeys, having to ignore the misogynist, sexist and rape-related comments of bosses, managers, supervisors, co-workers and classmates, having to abide by curfews and stay in women-only hostels, train coaches and schools, and yet still knowing that our bodies can be violated at any moment. And when they do, they are still met with a barrage of victim-blaming comments, misogynist justifications and the sanitizing propaganda of the mainstream media. Some media outlets are still shamelessly and disgustingly referring to the heinous crime in Kolkata as an ‘alleged rape’ even after an autopsy left no doubt that it was a gang rape.

Whether in public or behind closed doors, violent and abusive men walk free, while women are punished with confinement, control and shame for the crime of merely existing. For example, at Banaras Hindu University, after a very high-profile sexual assault case, the university authorities, instead of increasing security for female students and addressing the situation on campus, decided to lock the female students in their small hostels, while the men who committed the assault were allowed to walk free. What message does this send to abusive and predatory men? That any woman you catch out of bounds is yours to take? That women’s bodies are trophies to be pursued like exotic game?

As we all know, rape and sexual abuse are not just the actions of depraved individuals but a symptom of the patriarchal rape culture that has permeated all sections of society. West Bengal itself has long been considered a secular safe haven for women in India, a myth that has consistently belied the reality to this day. From Sandeshkhali and Presidency University to the closed doors of people’s homes, cases of violence and sexual abuse against women are rife. In fact, when these cases involve SC/ST women, they often don’t even make it to the news. The BJP and TMC’s own abominable track record of cover-ups and shielding of abusers shows that they only pretend to care about abuse when it is perpetrated by the other party.

Not only does Babu culture give dangerous men a back door into restricted areas where they can rape women, it also allows such men to escape justice, whether they are given safe passage out of the country, freed from prison and adorned with garlands, or the evidence of their atrocities is destroyed by the deployment of thousands of armed henchmen. Men must tackle rape culture, not by tying women up in ever-tighter prisons of dirt and concrete, but by being accountable, acting as allies, holding each other to account, and teaching the next generation of boys that a woman’s body belongs to no one but her own. We must also face the fact that patriarchy and sexual violence are instruments of maintaining the social order of capitalism—and patriarchy can only be abolished in the context of abolishing class society, a task that only the working class can accomplish.

ROSA India stands in solidarity with the family of the victim in their fight for justice. We support the demands of women and healthcare workers for improved security in hospitals, sufficient number of safe call rooms in the hospital, installation of CCTV cameras and more generally, better staffing and working conditions. However, this cannot and should not be the end. Administrators and professors involved in sexual abuse or cover-ups must be excluded from future recruitment in any public or private institution.

The movement must reject the divisions that have already arisen within itself, such as a march in Mumbai that banned Dalit women from joining. It is well known that Bahujan women are sexually abused at a much higher rate and that sexual abuse is a tool of control of oppressed castes. A serious and mature movement must go beyond hiding rape behind slum walls and tackle casteism and communalism within its own ranks, including the working class. A better future can only be won through an organised and sustained campaign that tackles sexual violence and femicide at all levels of society, including domestic, caste and communal abuse. Doctors, patients, students and teachers, and the entire working class must stand together. We urge other trade unions to speak out and mobilise solidarity strikes until demands are met, and for students to organise strikes and, if necessary, occupy campuses until demands for the safety of female students are met.

It is time to fight for change now. We cannot accept a slow, gradual loosening of the stranglehold around our necks. To wait is to accept our own death. We can, we must, and we will fight for our rights to safety and equality.

Yet the capitalist system and its inherent inequalities, championed by all mainstream parties in India, not only fails to address the root causes of gender-based violence; it actively reinforces them. This is a system that commodifies women’s bodies, ruthlessly exploits their labour, tailors security to one’s means, and allows the rich, powerful and ‘well-connected’ to avoid accountability. It is a system that must be dismantled from root to branch if we are to create a world where all women can live free from fear.

To truly end rape culture, we need to fight not just individual perpetrators, but the entire social order that enables and justifies their actions. This means building a movement not just against rape and sexual violence, but for the complete transformation of society — a movement that is anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-caste. The fight for justice for Moumita and for all victims of sexual violence is intrinsically linked to the fight for a socialist future — which is what ROSA is actively organizing for, in India and many other parts of the world.