Shabana Azmi says it’s ’embarrassing’ that rape incidents haven’t reduced following 2012 Delhi case: ‘We need to dismantle patriarchy’

Veteran Bollywood actor Shabana Azmi has expressed her deep dismay over the alleged rape and murder of a junior doctor at RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata.

By: Entertainment Desk

Kochi | August 29, 2024 09:14 AM IST

3 min read

Veteran Bollywood actor Shabana Azmi has expressed her deep dismay over the rape and murder of a junior doctor at R G Kar Hospital in Kolkata and urged people to stop treating women as commodities.

Shabana Azmi said it's embarrassing to see that such heinous acts have not reduced. (Images: Shabana/Facebook, Express photo by Partha Paul)

Even as the nation, particularly the medical community, continues to burn with fury over the alleged rape and murder of a junior doctor at the RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal, on August 9, veteran Bollywood actor Shabana Azmi has expressed her deep dismay over the brutal incident and urged people to stop treating women as commodities.

“Such incidents are extremely dangerous. It’s embarrassing to see that these kinds of heinous acts have not reduced despite the formation of Justice Verma Committee back in 2012 during the Nirbhaya case. We should not treat women as commodities… we need to dismantle patriarchy which is deep-rooted in us,” news agency ANI quoted the five-time National Award-winning actor as saying. She was speaking to the media after an event in Pune.

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The incident caught the attention of President Droupadi Murmu too, who said that she was “dismayed and horrified” and urged the country to wake up to the “perversion” of crimes against women. She further called upon the people to counter the mindset that sees women as “less powerful, less capable, less intelligent.”

“Those who share such views then go further and see the female as an object… We owe it to our daughters to remove the hurdles from their path of winning the freedom from fear,” Murmu said in an exclusive signed article for news agency PTI. “The nation is bound to be outraged, and so am I. Even as students, doctors and citizens were protesting in Kolkata, criminals remained on the prowl elsewhere. The victims include even kindergarten girls.”

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On August 9, the junior doctor’s body was discovered in the fourth-floor seminar hall of RG Kar Hospital, where she had allegedly been raped and murdered in the early hours of the day. Kolkata Police have arrested Sanjay Roy, a civic volunteer at the hospital, in connection with the incident.

The Calcutta High Court had transferred the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the alleged financial irregularities at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital to the CBI. The SIT was set up by the state government to investigate the alleged corruption at the hospital since January 2021, a period that corresponds with the tenure of Dr Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of the hospital.

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