31-year-old Indian man Sanjay Roy was given a life sentence on Monday for raping and murdering an intern at a hospital in Kolkata. Last August, 31-year-old Sanjay Roy, a volunteer at the hospital, strangled and mutilated the body of the woman who had fallen asleep at the hospital after a 36-hour shift. The murder case made a big splash in India, where sexual violence is a major problem but often remains out of the spotlight.
The killing sparked widespread protests in India and some 300,000 doctors across the country temporarily struck in solidarity with the victim. In addition, public figures and politicians demanded the death penalty for Roy, a call that is often heard in cases of sexual violence in the South Asian country.
The population’s anger was also directed at the hospital management and the police, who were said to have been careless in, among other things, handling evidence. But the case was mainly the last straw for the demonstrators. Only 27 percent of registered cases of sexual violence result in a conviction. This is partly because the police often refuse to take reports from Dalits, a group of people who fall outside the Indian caste system. They are the lowest group on the social ladder.
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