Little a judge can do about rape

August 21, 2024

ISLAMABAD – A 31-YEAR-OLD doctor was raped and murdered in a most gruesome way when she was on her night duty at a Kolkata hospital on Aug 9. She spoke to her parents shortly before midnight, and a key question being asked is why she was not missed or called for duty between 3am and 10am when her bloodied body was found on the floor of the hospital’s seminar room. Doctors around the country have staged protests at the crime. The media have given saturated coverage to the incident.

The Calcutta High Court has ticked off the state police and handed the case over to the federal investigating agency, the CBI. The chief justice of India has taken suo motu notice of the crime and is expected to pass his observations or an order in the matter.

The catch here is that the CBI works directly under Home Minister Amit Shah. Having been used to harass political rivals and intellectual dissenters in recent years, it has lost credibility as a neutral agency. The state governor, who represents the president of India, and thus follows the orders of the government of the day, has been accusing the opposition-run government of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, of assorted acts of commission and omission in the crime. BJP governors have been accused by several opposition-run state governments of acting as adjuncts of the party.

A truer problem for Ms Banerjee, however, is that she holds the health portfolio and that of law and order of West Bengal. Therefore, when she took out her own rally fiercely slamming the crime that took place under her watch, it didn’t wash. A most grievous crime has been effectively turned into a political slugfest. The BJP by force of habit is eyeing its chance to destabilise a chief