Source : Perth Now news
A court in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata has found a 33-year-old man guilty of the rape and murder of a young woman doctor at a government hospital.
Media reports say the defendant, who worked as a volunteer at the same hospital, will be sentenced on Monday.
He is liable to receive the death penalty for the assault last August, which triggered a wave of protests and strikes by doctors in the world’s most populous country.
According to Indian broadcaster NDTV, the man maintained his innocence in court and claimed to have been framed for the 31-year-old trainee doctor’s murder.
Doctors in India repeatedly experience violence in the workplace.
In addition to the punishment of the perpetrator or perpetrators, participants in the trial also demanded safer working conditions, an end to the prevalent “culture of threat” and better protection for women.
The woman’s body was found in a seminar room at the clinic, where she had been sleeping after a long shift.
Police arrested the volunteer assistant as a suspect.
At the time, doctors said that the autopsy indicated that the victim had probably been raped jointly by several people.
After the judgment was handed down on Saturday, the victim’s father thanked the judge, saying the guilty verdict had preserved his trust in the justice system, NDTV reported.
According to official figures, a woman or girl is raped every 15 minutes in India. Women’s rights activists assume that the number of unreported cases is high.
Although the relevant laws in India have been tightened in recent years, many people still feel that too little is being done to prevent such crimes.
