Kolkata celebrated India’s 78th independence with an orgy of unprecedented violence at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital that is already in the eye of a storm over the horrific rape and murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor on Friday.Meanwhile, though there was no mention of West Bengal in his Independence Day address, no one was left in any doubt what prompted the Prime Minister to speak about continuing violence against women and the need for exemplary punishment of culprits.Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s response to the incident came even later, around 6 pm on Thursday. “The troublemakers were outsiders. I don’t blame the students. They were some outsider political people who want to create trouble in Bengal – baam and Ram (which translates to Left and BJP in local political parlance). They have united to create this trouble…” she said. “In the videos I saw,” she went on to say, “there were people with the Indian flag who were BJP and others with DYFI’s red-and-white flag.” DYFI is Democratic Youth Front of India, CPI-M’s youth wing.The violence at RG Kar came just past the midnight hour, when the rest of West Bengal erupted in a heartwarming and united call for justice for the victim doctor, when thousands of men and women marched not just in Kolkata but in district towns from north to south. That is when an unconfirmed number of people – some say 35, others 100 and yet others 300 – broke the barricades at the main gate of the hospital and stormed into RG Kar, sending doctors, nurses, medical students and police fleeinghelterskelter for their lives. The mob first smashed the dharna site right at the hospital entrance where doctors and students have been sitting in protest against the alleged rape and murder of their colleague, since her lifeless body was found from the seminar hall. Plastic chairs lay around in pieces, flower pots broken and posters and banners calling for justice for the victim torn to shreds. Its next target was the Emergency department on the ground floor of the 7-storey building. The doctor was murdered in a seminar room on the 3rd floor. The mob did not get anywhere near that room. What they did was tear down the iron grill gates at the entryof the building and ransack it indiscriminately: CCTV cameras, bathroom taps, doors, windows, tables, chairs, lights, refrigerators stocked with medicines, cupboards full of hospital supplies and life-saving medical equipment. A police outpost with camp cots and wireless sets and a telephone were smashed to smithereens.
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