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'All I can do is get justice' Father pays tribute to his dead daughter
The Guardian
|August 21, 2024
'We raised her with a lot of hardship," the father of the trainee doctor murdered during a rest break at a Kolkata hospital has said.
"She worked extremely hard to become a doctor. All she did was study, study, study.
"All our dreams have been shattered in one night. We sent her to work and the hospital gave us her body. It's all finished for us."
He told the Guardian by phone: "My daughter isn't coming back. I'm never going to hear her voice or laugh. All I can do now is concentrate on getting her justice."
The rape and murder of the doctor at RG Kar hospital in Kolkata on 9 August, and subsequent handling of the case by the authorities, has led to protests and strikes by doctors across India.
Her father, who cannot be named under an Indian law that protects the identity of the dead woman, said a career in medicine was all his only child had ever wanted. The 31-year-old had beaten the odds to qualify for one of about 107,000 places in India's medical colleges, which more than a million aspiring doctors compete for every year. She won a place at College of Medicine & JNM hospital in Kalyani in her home state of West Bengal.
Her parents financed her dream with the precarious income her father earned as a tailor.
This story is from the August 21, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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