Who is Rimjhim Sinha, the woman behind ‘Reclaim the Night’ campaign in Kolkata?

Kolkata doctor rape-murder: "Reclaim the Night' campaign, which gained momentum through social media, began around 11:55pm on Wednesday.

Kolkata doctor rape-murder: Thousands of women on Wednesday night took to streets across West Bengal to protest the gruesome rape and murder of a junior doctor at Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9.

Rimjhim Sinha graduated from the Presidency University in Kolkata. (Facebook/ Rimjhim Sinha)

The 'Reclaim the Night' campaign, which gained momentum through social media, began around 11:55pm, aligning with Independence Day celebrations, and spread across key areas in both small towns and big cities, including several landmarks in Kolkata. Follow LIVE updates here.

The protests, however, were marked by violence at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital where unidentified mob stormed into the emergency ward and vandalised it. The body of the doctors was inside a seminar hall of the hospital.

An unrest was also reported at Mandirtala in Howrah district, where the protestors came face to face with members of the ruling Trinamool Congress during their ‘Freedom at Midnight’ celebrations, according to PTI.

Rimjhim Sinha, who took the initiative of ‘Reclaim the Night’, described the event as a new freedom struggle for women, symbolised by a viral poster of a red hand holding a crescent moon.

Who is Rimjhim Sinha?

• Rimjhim Sinha is a social science researcher who graduated from the Presidency University in Kolkata, The Telegraph reported.
• Rimjhim Sinha, who graduated with a sociology degree in 2020, said she was shocked by the news of the rape and murder of the junior doctor at her workplace.
• In protest, Rimjhim Sinha had shared her decision to spend the Independence Day eve outside in a Facebook post.
• She told The Telegraph that she was particularly agitated by a comment by the medical college's ex-principal Sandip Ghosh. He had allegedly questioned why the junior had gone to the seminar hall alone.
• “Such a comment, shifting the blame on the victim, cannot be accepted. In protest, I decided to spend the night of August 14 outdoors. No one can lay a claim on the night and dictate to us who can be outside and why,” she told the newspaper.
• Sinha, however, pointed out that she never expected that her call would go viral and thousands of people would join her on the streets.
• “I am very overwhelmed by the entire response. I am seeing women coming out of their homes and even if they cannot stay for the entire night, they are making a decision to stay for two hours or three hours in the night,” she was quoted as saying by News18.