An Indian court on Monday sentenced to life in prison the man convicted of raping and murdering a trainee doctor in Kolkata, sparing him the death penalty in a case that was a chilling example of how the country remains unsafe for women. The killing in August led to months of protests and political turmoil in the state of West Bengal, of which Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, is the capital. India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, its equivalent of the F.B.I., had asked the court to hand down a death penalty for Sanjay Roy, the perpetrator. So had the victim’s family, and the powerful chief minister of the state, Mamata Banerjee. But the court ruled that Mr. Roy’s crimes did not meet the “rarest of the rare” standard used to justify executing those convicted of capital offenses.
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