KOLKATA — A single judge bench of the Calcutta High Court, on Monday, granted permission to around 40 organisations, including some doctors’ associations, to conduct rallies on Tuesday between 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. as a protest against the ghastly rape and murder of a woman doctor last month. The association chose Tuesday as the day of the protest rally since the two occasions of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday and Mahalaya Amavasya (a significant day in Hinduism for performing rituals to honour ancestors) coincide. However, the proposed rally faced some hurdles as the Kolkata Police issued prohibitory orders over the assembly beyond a certain number of people on a major part of the rally route between Esplanade in central Kolkata and Rabindra Sadan in South Kolkata. Thereafter, the rally organisers approached Calcutta High Court’s single judge bench of Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj for permission. As the matter came up for hearing on Monday, the counsel for the state government insisted that the rally organisers should give an approximate number of the people participating in the rally. In this counter-argument, the counsel for the petitioner and CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya said that since the subject of the rally involved larger...