Calls for death penalty for man found guilty of doctor rape and murder

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The parents of an Indian trainee doctor who was raped and murdered at a Kolkata hospital last year say they are "shocked" that their daughter's killer escaped the death penalty.  Sanjay Roy was sentenced to life imprisonment.

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00:00This judgement came as a surprise for many people here in India.

00:07Sanjay Roy was convicted on Saturday of raping and murdering a 31-year-old female trainee

00:12doctor while she took a nap in a seminar hall at her Kolkata hospital last August.

00:19And yesterday he was sentenced to life in prison until his death.

00:24But he had been facing the death penalty and many people here thought that he would be

00:28given that.

00:29India's criminal law system has a doctrine known as the rarest of rare and it refers

00:34to cases that are deemed so abhorrent or so out of the ordinary compared to other crimes

00:40that they warrant the person who's been convicted of getting the death penalty.

00:45And India's Central Bureau of Investigation had argued in court that this is one of those

00:50cases, that the rape and murder of a doctor while she was on duty at her hospital should

00:56be deemed rarest of the rare.

00:59But judge Anirban Das of the Kolkata Selda court yesterday rejected that argument and

01:04it's led to a wave of criticism.

01:06Local media reported the woman's parents said they were dismayed and shocked that the circumstances

01:12in which their daughter died wouldn't meet that threshold.

01:15The Chief Minister of West Bengal where the crime occurred, Mamata Banerjee, had also

01:20demanded the death penalty and told reporters after the state was quote, not happy with

01:25the outcome.

01:26And doctors who marched through the streets in protest after the sentence told the ABC

01:32it only amounted to half justice.

01:34They said they'll continue protesting until all of the people involved are punished.

01:39They've long maintained that multiple people would have had to have been involved due to

01:43the extent of the victim's injuries and claim that the investigation was botched.

01:49This sentence was handed down by a lower court so it can be appealed.

01:53Firstly to the Kolkata High Court and then to the Supreme Court of India.

01:58And both the victim's parents and Roy's defence team have indicated that an appeal is an option

02:04they're likely to explore.

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