NEW DELHI: In a moment that shook the conscience of the nation, President Droupadi Murmu had a tearfully condemning attack on the barbarous rape and murder incident of the young doctor in Kolkata, saying 'enough is enough'." Her words oozed with emotion and burdened responsibility as she spoke for the first time on the dastardly crime that has outraged and sparked protests across India.
The President's comments follow the ghastly recovery of the 31-year-old doctor's body from the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9. The state of affairs has incited hostile rages, with students, healthcare workers, and even members of the public demonstrating in massive numbers to demand for justice and a review of the handling of crimes against women.
The President did not mince her words while making the comments on the unbroken threats unleashed by criminals on the social life of the country despite the nation's relentless efforts to bring justice. "Even as students, doctors, and citizens were protesting in Kolkata, elsewhere criminals were on the prowl," she said in an indirect reference to the unending threat a woman faces in India.
The President's words carried deep dismay over the continuing atrocities on her sex. "No civilised society can allow daughters and sisters to be subjected to such atrocities," she said and called for "honest, unbiased self-introspection" within the society to address the root causes for the same.
She said that since the Nirbhaya case in 2012, Indian society has suffered from "collective amnesia," where several incidents of rape have fallen between the cracks, lost in the mists of time.
"Repugnant, this collective amnesia," she said, as she called on the country to confront its history of violence against women and to take actual initiatives to change. "Let us deal with this perversion in a comprehensive way to check it right at its beginning," she emphasized.
The Kolkata incident has again brought the country's women's safety policies under question. In connection to the case, the police detained a civic volunteer, while the family alleged the victim had been gang-raped by multiple persons.
The apex court has since stepped in, directing a national task force to probe how the security for healthcare workers can be beefed up, terming the incident as the one which shocked the conscience of the nation.
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