By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Aug 19:
When I grew up as a child in a suburb of Imphal, three images about Bengal were very strongly imprinted – two positive and one negative; I am talking of mid-1950s and the beginning of 1970s. We were fed with stories both by our elders and the newspaper reports of the eye-capturing competitive soccer performances of the East Bengal and the Mohun Bagan players year by year. In the beginning of the 1970s, we did learn the wonderfully spirit enhancing poem of the Greatest Poet (I intentionally avoid mentioning his name here for the purity of him should not be diluted by what we are going to deliberate in what follows) of ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear, Where the Head is Held High’. The only negative dimension associated only with travelling by the railways, and this came up only in the mid-1970s when necessity arose to travel outside the home province for higher studies. The advice to take care such that one does not get fooled by the pretenders for train service providers in the Calcutta Station was much weaker than the robust charm of the two positive dimensions.
But what has very recently happened at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata (with about a quarter into the 21st century) of Raping and Murdering a Doctor has immediately achieved two things. First, the very image of the RG Kar Hospital, which was very much a component of the positive Calcutta picture, has now been irreparably compromised. Second, it has got such a huge impact to override the two positive images in a very negative way; I feel this must be the case with quite many others too.
With the increasing, though slow, revelations on the correlates of the crime, we can say for sure that there is a Gender Dimension to the crime. It definitely was a crime committed by males on a solitary woman. The criminals must have also known for sure the socio-political status of the parents of the victim besides the corporate information on the duty engagements, places of visit and behavioural timing for relaxation. With these qualitative features, we can convince ourselves that it is not a juvenile crime. Further, the venue of the crime and the still strong covering up of the correlates of the crime and the findings of the post-mortem reports tell us that the outcome of rape and murder is not one caused by sore relationships.
Medical colleges and hospitals are places where people visit for betterment of health and recovery from illnesses. But it is exactly at such a place that a doctor, who could help and improve the well-being of visitors, was raped and murdered in an unimaginable heinous scale.
Naturally the National Commission for Women undertook a suo moto enquiry into the incident. The online edition of the Hindustan Times reports on its website on Sunday (18 August 2024) thus:
1. “The NCW’s inquiry revealed that no security guards were present during the incident, leaving on-call interns, doctors, and nurses without sufficient protection during night shifts. 2. The panel reported potential evidence tampering, noting that the site where the crime allegedly took place was undergoing sudden renovations. 3. The crime scene should have been sealed immediately by the police, it said. 4. The hospital was also found to lack basic amenities for women medical staff, including poorly maintained washrooms, inadequate lighting, and a complete absence of security measures. 5. The inquiry also highlighted serious concerns regarding the investigation. The questioning of the former principal, Dr Sandip Ghosh, who resigned after the incident, remains incomplete, the NCW said in its preliminary report.”
As Michael Braswell (2008) puts: “What one person may believe is right, another person may feel is wrong. Our beliefs and values regarding right and wrong and good and evil are shaped by our parents and friends, by the communities we are a part of, and by our own perceptions. Codes of conduct are also influenced by the law and our religious beliefs. Professional organizations involving such areas as law, medicine, and criminal justice also offer professional codes of ethics as a benchmark for persons who fulfil those professional roles. This study involves all aspects of who we are—our minds, hearts, relationships with each other, and the intentions and motives for our actions regarding both our inner and outer environment. We are inclined to believe that ethical persons act in good or right ways, while unethical people commit evil acts and other forms of wrongdoing. Then again, it is not only a matter of a person acting “unethically”; also at issue are persons who could chose to do good but instead do nothing, allowing others to do evil. So it is not simply a matter of my committing an evil or wrongful act, it is also a matter of my being an indirect accomplice to evil by silently standing by, letting evil occur when I could stand for what is right. As a result, unethical acts can occur by the commission of wrongdoing or by omission—by allowing wrongdoing to occur.” Sociologists have gone ahead of others in examining the phenomenon of crimes. They have emphasised that it is unimaginable to think of a society where criminals do not exist; because of plurality of reasons of divergence effects of social factors, they do emerge. This is where they emphasise, with governance authorities, the putting in place of surveillance system in places of work and interaction such that anybody involved or intend to commit crime can be identified and monitored. But in the case of the present institution, RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, the system was just non-existent. In other words, the existential challenges were already in-built in the institutional mechanism of the RG Kar.
The convenient happening of the crime of rape and murder at the RG Kar cannot be allowed to occur anywhere in the future. Now two things are called for immediate attention. First, no efforts should be spared to identify, arrest and bring the criminals to justice; it is an event where issue of balancing of justice does not arise. Second, while Sociologists are good at identifying the social-behavioural dimensions, there is need for Economists for bringing the dimensions of costs involved in such incidents; besides the huge costs incurred by the parents and relatives in the present case, the socio-economic costs are already huge. There is an imperative to constitute a committee consisting of Sociologists, Economists and Jurists to examine the present case in detail and evolve governance mechanisms for the future.
