“We are angry because this affects us personally,” said Koyel Ghosh, a 35-year-old nonbinary queer feminist activist who helped organize the nightly “Reclaim the Night” protests after the tragedy. “As individuals, our personal fear fueled our political will to rise up in resistance.”

Amrita Bhattacharya, a 27-year-old physiotherapist, was repeatedly tear-gassed by police during the demonstrations, even as she watched police allow a mob of armed men to storm the hospital grounds and destroy property. She said the doctor’s killing shattered her sense of security in a city where she once felt safe.

“Women’s safety has gradually deteriorated,” she told This Week in Asia, recalling how in 2014 she could ride on buses full of men late at night without being sexually assaulted – but since then she has been harassed on the subway several times in a week.

The irony is not lost on the women of Kolkata that their personal security appears to have deteriorated under the leadership of a woman chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, and her All India Trinamool Congress. After all, it was Banerjee’s party that toppled the Left Front’s 34-year dominance in West Bengal in 2011 by promising better protection for the state’s citizens.

Banerjee’s own record on women’s issues, however, is rather mixed. In 2012, she dismissed the gang rape of a woman in Calcutta as a “fabricated incident.” And in the most recent case of the 31-year-old junior doctor, the authorities initially described the incident as suicide, but only backtracked after public outcry.

Sumana Mukhopadhyay, a 52-year-old protester and theatre artist, alleged that the authorities and police were trying to shield the culprits from justice. “We want the investigating agency to arrest the culprits and the court to punish them severely so that such incidents do not happen again,” Mukhopadhyay said.

02:13

India’s doctors demand better protection for their staff after rape and murder case

India’s doctors demand better protection for their staff after rape and murder case

The handling of the case has indeed raised disturbing questions. College principal Sandip Ghosh, who resigned in the wake of the scandal, is now being questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) about why the case was initially ruled a suicide. An anonymous former student claims there are unanswered questions about alleged tampering with the crime scene, the hasty cremation of the victim’s body and the hospital’s decision to allow renovations after the incident.

A parliamentarian from Banerjee’s party, who declined to comment officially, said that the Kolkata police had made at least one arrest in connection with the case, although the CBI investigation was still ongoing.

She stressed that the state government has taken measures to improve women’s safety, such as introducing a “Night Helper” program to support women who work evening shifts.

“Women can turn to women at police stations if male police officers do not want to listen to them,” said the parliamentarian.

But legal experts argue that such ad hoc solutions are wholly inadequate. Lawyer Jhuma Sen has filed a petition in the Calcutta High Court demanding that the state government detail the structural reforms and accountability measures it has implemented to ensure safety of women at workplaces in line with the Supreme Court’s guidelines.

“Hasty and piecemeal measures will never work,” Sen said. “We need structural changes.”

Calcutta – often hailed as the cultural capital of India – was the birthplace of the country’s first female doctor, Kadambani Bose Ganguly, in 1886. In the pre-independence era, the city also spearheaded social movements for widow remarriage, the abolition of polygamy and the education of women.

But today, this bastion of progressive ideals seems to have degenerated into a city whose prosperity comes only from money and political power, says Sanskrit lecturer Basu.

Illusion of security destroyed

Women’s rights activist Dolon Ganguly complains that the scourge of sexual harassment has even reached protests in Kolkata. She has noted a disturbing change: the city’s traditionally “protective” and polite men have given way to a new generation of “macho, aggressive, misogynistic and intolerant” figures.

Many residents now fear that their city could take a similar dangerous turn to New Delhi, where 1,204 rape cases were reported last year – the highest number in the entire country.

Patralika Mukherjee, a 50-year-old production manager, said a woman’s safety in Kolkata often depends on her socioeconomic background. She took comfort in the fact that the city has been spared the brutal rapes and murders seen in northern India. But that illusion of safety has been shattered.

Analysts say the crisis is rooted in rising unemployment and the disintegration of Kolkata’s once-lauded education system. Indeed, more than three million jobs in unregistered businesses in the state have disappeared since 2015-16. And a volunteerism program meant to fill gaps has instead become a breeding ground for political patronage and gender-neutral recruits accused of criminal acts – including the murder of the doctor-educator this month.

City clubs that were once centres of education, sports and cultural enrichment are now taken over by unemployed, uneducated men who, according to Basu, are all too often the perpetrators of harassment of women.

“The ruling party supports these clubs with donations and legitimizes their activities, making the city an unsafe place for women,” she said.

Despite all this, 44-year-old filmmaker Debarati Gupta believes that Kolkata is still “one of the safest cities” in India. She blames the “total negligence” towards academic standards and teacher attitudes, especially in government colleges, for the moral weakness of the younger generation.

Women’s rights activist Ganguly also sees a glimmer of hope in the “anger and solidarity” currently taking over the streets of Kolkata. Basu believes that this sporadic movement could still show an “alternative path to reform” – if the city’s leaders had the courage to face the crisis head-on.