Will Mamata's Terrible Handling of the RG Kar Rape and Murder Seal Her Fate?

There is an almost hysterical irrationality to the Chief Minister's utterances now.

India commemorates the midnight of 15 August as a proud and sacred moment, a moment when the country won its freedom in 1947. This year, at that hour, the state of West Bengal showed how far it had travelled from that moment of hope and idealism.

Soon after midnight, a rampaging mob entered the premises of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, where doctors, students and medical staff have been protesting against last week’s brutal rape and murder of a 31-year-old junior doctor. Armed with lathis, the hooligans beat up the protesters, ransacked the stage from which they had been demanding justice, and destroyed hospital property.

Predictably, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew and Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) leader, Abhishek Banerjee, condemned the incident and called for swift action against those who had committed the violence. And predictably, Mamata went on to blame her political opponents, the CPI(M) and the BJP, for orchestrating the vandalism. But such is the culture of lawlessness in the state now, a lawlessness that some would say the ruling TMC has done much to foster, that few are buying this narrative. 

On the contrary, many feel that the mob was unleashed to destroy evidence at RG Kar and to intimidate the protesting doctors who have refused to resume their duties. Other theories are swirling in the air — that the government-run hospital was a hub of corruption and malpractice, that the young doctor was murdered first and it was then dressed up to look like a violent sexual assault, that some RG Kar interns were involved in the stomach-turning crime.

Whether the rumours are true or not, there is no getting away from the fact that the way the crime was handled in its immediate aftermath raises several disturbing questions about the intent of the powers-that-be. 

Though the murder occurred in the hospital’s seminar room early on 9 August, why was it not reported to the police until several hours later? Why did the police record it as “unnatural death", which is how suicide is also described, instead of terming it as ‘murder’? Why did the hospital administration initially tell the victim’s parents that their daughter had died by suicide?

Was the hospital trying to cover up the murder? And if so, who or what was it trying to shield?

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The most astonishing piece in this puzzle is that while Sandip Ghosh — the principal of RG Kar Hospital and the man who must be held accountable, both for the lack of women’s safety in the hospital as well as the tardy and deliberately misleading response to the crime — did step down from his post, he was immediately appointed principal of the National Medical College, Kolkata.

Why, though? What is the nature of the state government’s kinship with Ghosh, who, at the very least, was guilty of gross dereliction of duty both before and after the crime, that it felt the need to install him as principal of another teaching hospital? What did the government stand to gain by scrambling to keep Ghosh in a position of power although it must have known that the move would further antagonise an already angry populace?

The students and doctors of National Medical College, who, like their fellow doctors across the state, are protesting the gruesome crime, did not let Ghosh join work. And while handing over the case to the CBI earlier this week, the Calcutta High Court, too, said that he should go on long leave. Incidentally, though the Chief Minister insisted that everything was being done to ensure a speedy investigation into the crime, the West Bengal police did not think it fit to question Ghosh about it.

Mamata Banerjee has routinely blamed the Opposition for the most heinous incidents that have taken place in the state, framing them as attempts to malign her and her administration. When there were reports earlier this year of instances of land grabs and the sexual assault of women in Sandeshkhali, allegedly by local TMC musclemen-turned-leaders, Mamata reacted in similar fashion. She termed it as a political conspiracy against her party. It was only after the agitation intensified that the main accused was taken into custody.

This time, too, Mamata has claimed that the Opposition parties — the BJP, the CPI(M) and the Congress — are politicising a grievous crime and stoking the protests. In fact, she has gone so far as to declare that the agitating students and doctors are being used to try and replicate the recent events in Bangladesh in order to topple her administration.

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Bizarrely, the Chief Minister has announced that she will lead a protest march on 16 August, demanding that the CBI wraps up the case against the only person who has so far been picked up for the crime (even though the victim may well have been gang-raped) and hangs him by Sunday, the 18th! Her nephew has gone a step further and called for a law that allows law-enforcement agencies to kill an accused through an “encounter’’.

Mamata, who made her bones in politics as the high priestess of street protests, clearly wants to out-protest those who are agitating against what happened at RG Kar. But there is an almost hysterical irrationality to her utterances now. (Hang an accused by Sunday? Without a trial?) Which perhaps suggests her desperation to bring the public mood back in her favour. 

Will it work? The massive turnout of people, both men and women, in the Reclaim the Night protests held in the state on the night of 14-15 August, and the ongoing protests by doctors and members of civil society, signal a phenomenal public display of outrage that has not been witnessed in recent times.

There has, of course, been simmering disaffection against Mamata’s administration — against the corruption, against the scams, against the lumpenisation of politics. But she has managed to contain it all with a mix of aggressive welfarism and astute electoral social engineering.

The popular anger has a sharper edge this time. And perhaps there is a tipping point in every game, no matter how cleverly you play it.

Though Mamata has ostentatiously championed women — from introducing welfare schemes like Lakshmir Bhandar to sending the most number of women MPs to Parliament, it could be that the horrifying rape and murder of one young woman will finally make the public say: Enough! Enough with the window dressings! Enough with the empty words! Enough with the impunity with which the corrupt operate! We are fed up. We have had enough.

(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author. She tweets @ShumaRaha. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)

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