An Indian court on Monday sentenced a man convicted of raping and killing a trainee doctor in India to life in prison, sparing him the death penalty in a case that was a chilling example of how unsafe the country remains for women.
The killing in Kolkata in August led to months of protests and political turmoil in the state of West Bengal, of which Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, is the capital.
India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, its equivalent of the FBI, has asked the court to impose the death penalty on Sanjay Roy, the perpetrator. As well as the victim’s family and the powerful minister of state, Mamata Banerjee.
But the court ruled that Mr Roy’s crimes did not meet the “rarest of the rare” standard used to justify executing those convicted of capital offences.
Rekha Sharma, a former head of the National Commission for Women and a member of parliament, told an Indian news agency that “the victim’s family and all of us are very saddened” that Mr. Roy escaped the death penalty. A member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, she blamed the sentence on the failings of the Kolkata police, who answer to Ms Banerjee.
Before the sentencing, Mr. Roy, who served as a volunteer with the Calcutta police, pleaded not guilty. “I didn’t do this. They set me up,” he said in court on Monday. A few months ago, he said that the written confession he gave to the police was obtained by force.
Details of the crime were unclear days after the body of the 31-year-old victim was found in a seminar hall at Calcutta University Hospital. They were also terrible, in a way he recalled a notorious case of rape and murder in New Delhi in December 2012 which also led to mass protests and, eventually, to four hangings.
In the Kolkata case, a junior doctor went to sleep on a mattress she had placed on the floor in the early hours of August 9, after a busy hospital shift. After her body was discovered, authorities said she had been raped and strangled. Police arrested Mr Roy after he was identified on CCTV footage entering the building before the attack and wearing headphones found at the scene of the crime.
The reaction of the public was extraordinary, and escalated over the next few months. Thousands of doctors across the city went on strike demanding safer working conditions. They were joined by many thousands of Indians, angry at what they saw as callous treatment of the victim’s family and efforts to cover it up.
“People are convinced it was linked to massive corruption in the medical school,” said Jawhar Sircar, a former civil servant who joined Ms. Banerjee’s political party but resigned in September over what he said was bribery under her rule and the role she appeared to play in the Kolkata hospital rape and murder case.
A spokesman for Ms. Banerjee, one of Modi’s most vocal rivals, welcomed the verdict by posting on social media that the politician and the Kolkata police were vindicated by the verdict. But many protesters, Mr. Sircar added, took to the streets to rally against what they saw as corruption during her long tenure as West Bengal chief minister.
And now, after the sentencing, widespread sentiment, said Mr. Sircar, was that “by selecting this guy and punishing him, justice was only partially served.”
