What happened in the Kolkata rape case that triggered doctors’ protests?

Activists and doctors demand better safeguarding of women and medical professionals after a trainee medic was raped and murdered in Kolkata.

Activists and doctors across India are planning to march on Wednesday evening to demand justice for a female doctor, who was raped and murdered while on duty in a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Protests titled “Reclaim the Night” are expected in West Bengal, Delhi, Karnataka, Odisha, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, among other states, according to an organiser of the protests based in Kolkata.

This comes after two days of nationwide protests by doctors following the incident at RG Kar Medical College in West Bengal’s capital city. “Sit-in demonstrations and agitation in the hospital campus will continue,” one of the protesting doctors, identified as Dr Mridul, told Al Jazeera.

Services in some medical centres were halted indefinitely, and marches and vigils shed light on issues of sexual violence, as well as doctors’ safety in the world’s most populous nation.

A 31-year-old trainee doctor’s dead body, bearing multiple injuries, was found on August 9 in a government teaching hospital in Kolkata.

The parents of the victim were initially told “by hospital authorities that their daughter had committed suicide,” lawyer and women’s rights activist Vrinda Grover told Al Jazeera. But an autopsy confirmed that the victim was raped and killed.

Grover has appeared for victims in sexual violence cases in India in the past, including Bilkis Bano, a Muslim woman who was gang-raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, and Soni Sori, a tribal activist based in Chhattisgarh state.

Thousands of doctors marched in Kolkata on Monday, demanding better security measures and