OpinionPOD: 'RG Kar and Sharon Raj verdicts are saying something about who we are, and it’s not good'

On January 20, 2025, two Indian courtrooms separated by 2,500 kilometres, delivered two widely diverging verdicts. Both the judgments – the life sentence awarded to Sanjoy Roy in the brutal rape and murder of a doctor at the RG Kar Medical College, and the death penalty for S.S. Greeshma in the Sharon Raj murder – “feel” wildly dissatisfying. The parallel narratives — one of institutional violence, another of intimate violence — force us to confront uncomfortable questions. Both the RG Kar and Sharon Raj verdicts reveal a need for neat narratives, for monsters we can identify and eliminate by sending our problems to the gallows. But violence rarely announces itself with such clarity. When we reduce justice to a spectacle — whether through public bloodlust or performative celebration — we dodge the harder questions about why women’s bodies remain battlegrounds… and why their choices invite harsher judgment than their violation," says Karanjeet Kaur, journalist and former editor of Arré, in this week's column ----------------------------------------------------------------