A mob of hundreds of people forced their way into the hospital last night where he was treated last week. A young doctor was raped and murderedand vandalized the facilities amid strong protests in several cities in India criticizing the insecurity among health personnel.

He RG Kar College Hospital, Kolkatain the state of West Bengal, woke up this Thursday with Serious damage, including several broken windows and walls, medical supplies on the floor, torn-out stretchers and destroyed security camerasaccording to images released by the Indian agency ANI.

The violence was the result of a mob “of between 500 and 1,000 people” who arrived at the hospital shortly after midnight, a security guard at the site told the media. “There were too many of us, there were about ten or twelve of us plus the police. So we were not rivals,” the guard added. Fearing that the violence had destroyed evidence of the doctor’s murder, the Calcutta police said in X that “the crime scene was not disturbed.”

In parallel to this incident at the hospital, thousands of women took to the streets of Kolkata around midnight to protest the rape of a 31-year-old female resident doctor The body of the young doctor was found in the hospital on Friday. An autopsy confirmed that the victim had been raped before her murder.

Until now, the protests were mainly organised by doctors’ associations, who were questioning the lack of security in their workplaces. But last night’s protests, which called themselves ‘Women, we reclaim the night’, thousands of women from all professions participated. Although the main demonstration was largely peaceful, hundreds of people gathered in front of the university campus where the hospital where the doctor was murdered is located, and clashed with the police, who resorted to tear gas firing to disperse the crowd, according to Indian media. Images posted on social media showed some overturned vehicles and smashed street furniture at the scene of the clash.

In addition to Kolkata, doctors’ protests have also taken place in other Indian cities, demanding the creation of a mandatory protocol to ensure the safety of health workers and the ratification of a Central Health Protection Act. Sexual violence against women in India is a persistent problem, and it often provokes a reaction from a section of society that demands more measures to ensure women’s safety in the face of a complex problem.

India’s latest crime report, which covers 2022, recorded 31,500 cases of rape in that year alone, approximately 86 per day.