Hope this note finds you well. Wish we could say the same about ourselves but we cannot. The recent brutal incident in Kolkata, India has shook us from deep within. We at Saheli are still processing the sadness and rage we feel by the shameful & heinous crime of rape & murder of the trainer doctor committed in Kolkata on Aug. 9.

The incident has amplified debate about the safety of women and doctors in India, and has sparked significant outrage, nationwide protests, and demands for a thorough investigation.

The incident has garnered widespread media coverage and triggered outrage across the nation especially within the medical community, as student unions and colleagues of the deceased demanded justice and improved security measures on campus.

The brutal rape and murder of this 31-year-old female trainee doctor has sent shockwaves across the nation and worldwide, igniting widespread protests everywhere in India and across the globe, from Asia to Europe to Australia, to Canada, to the US and elsewhere, bringing to light, serious concerns about safety of women in the workplace. It generated a shock wave so strong that more than 5 million people in Kolkata, mostly women of all ages participated in a spontaneous movement named "Reclaim the Night" demanding the basic human right of SAFETY for women and all others and demanding justice.

Such a movement is completely non-political, non-religious but a historic and unprecedented one. It mirrors the historic "steal the night movement" started in Philadelphia in 1975. 

Saheli Boston stands in solidarity against gender inequalities, gender-based violence against women and prays for the family of the female doctor who lost her promising life.

As you know, Saheli Inc., a sister organization of IAGB, is a non-political, non-religious org. that offers non-judgemental & culturally sensitive domestic & sexual violence services that are vital to the well-being of women and stands for freedom, peace, justice and all kinds of human rights.

In addition to being the President of IAGB, I am also the board Secretary of Saheli Inc. - and I am a domestic violence survivor - all the more why I cannot look away when violence and injustice overtake our basic human rights anywhere in the world. 

I feel that women must condemn these atrocities univocally. We must condemn human rights violations anywhere and everywhere.

Saheli pledges one and all to stand in solidarity in condemning such atrocities and pledging to stop them, to grieve for all those we have lost to gender-based violence, to express our anger at the ongoing injustice against women's bodies, and to pledge that we will not continue in silence, to show our solidarity and humaneness.

It will be a peaceful gathering of people reciting poetry, making statements, holding the light and making a pledge for justice, in solidarity.

Date & Time: Sat. Sept. 7, 5-7 pm.

More details are below:

https://www.facebook.com/share/ZkeR1Vi6jPnFn3mx/?mibextid=9l3rBW

"Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud"