President decries “collective amnesia” on crimes against women
In a strong message related to the rape and murder of a second-year postgraduate trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9, President Droupadi Murmu told the news agency PTI in an interview today that she was “dismayed and horrified” at the incident but, at the same time, ripped into the “deplorable mindset” that objectifies women and sees them as a “lesser human being”, thus allowing heinous crimes against women to be perpetrated again and again.
She criticised the “collective amnesia”, which she described as “obnoxious”, of the people of the country that allows regular perpetration of crimes against women across the country (India records 51 cases of crimes against women every hour, with over 4.4 lakh cases registered in 2022, according to the latest NCRB annual report).
Referring to the Nirbhaya case of 2012 (the gang-rape and murder of a paramedic student in Delhi), she said that “in the 12 years since Nirbhaya, countless rapes have been forgotten … this ‘collective amnesia’ is obnoxious”.
In her interview, though she mentioned the Kolkata incident, she also stressed that it “was not the only incident of its kind … it was part of a series of crimes against women”.
“[E]ven as students, doctors and citizens were protesting in Kolkata, criminals remained on prowl elsewhere … The recent spate of crimes should force honest self-introspection …,” she said, referring indirectly to other recent horrific incidents of violent crimes against women in the news now, like the rape of nurses in Uttarakhand and Maharashtra, and the sexual assault allegations against actors and directors in the Malayalam film industry (which came out through the Hema Committee report).
