STOCKHOLM: Thousands of diaspora Indians were protesting in more than 130 cities across 25 countries on Sunday, organisers said, to demand justice after last month’s rape and murder of a trainee doctor at a hospital in the city of Kolkata.

The protests started in large and small groups across Japan, Australia, Taiwan and Singapore, before spreading to cities in several European countries. Sixty were planned in the US.

They added to ongoing protests around India after the Aug 9 killing of the 31-year-old postgraduate student of chest medicine.

A suspect has been arrested along with the former principal of R.G. Kar Medical College where the victim was studying.

At one of the protests in the Swedish capital Stockholm, scores of mainly black-clad women gathered in Sergels Torg square to sing songs in Bengali and hold signs, demanding accountability for the crime and safety for Indian women.

“The news of this heinous crime committed on a young trainee doctor while on duty numbed and shocked each of us at the sheer ruthlessness, brutality and disregard of human life,” said Dipti Jain, an organiser of the global protests.

Jain, now a British citizen and alumni of the Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital, had last month organised a female doctors protest in the UK.

India’s Supreme Court has listed the next hearing of the slain trainee’s case for Monday.

Although tougher laws were introduced after the 2012 gruesome gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi, activists say the Kolkata case shows how women continue to suffer from sexual violence.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2024