Kolkata doctor rape-murder: Medics protest against CBI for sluggishness in probing case

Kolkata: After agitating against the West Bengal government for more than two months, the junior doctors protesting against the August 9 rape and murder of one of their colleagues in a hospital in Kolkata finally targeted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday for its alleged sluggishness in probing the case.

As members of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Forum took out a torch rally from the office of the state medical council to the local office of the CBI in Kolkata, they were joined by several civil society activists and common people, who demanded that the central agency should expeditiously bring to justice all the culprits responsible for the rape and murder of the young postgraduate doctor.

Dr Debashis Halder, one of the protesting doctors, expressed concerns over the CBI’s alleged lackadaisical approach in probing the case.

The CBI, which had taken over the probe from the Kolkata Police on August 14, filed a chargesheet in a special court in the city on October 7, naming Sanjay Roy as the only prime accused. The central agency did not name anyone else in the chargesheet filed on Monday. Neither did it accuse Roy of being involved in gang rape, indicating that the investigation so far did not find any evidence of the crime being committed by more than one person.

Roy, a member of the contractual support staff of the Kolkata Police, had been arrested by the city cops a day after the postgraduate trainee doctor had been found raped and murdered inside the seminar room of the Department of Chest Medicine on the third floor of the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9.

The protesting junior doctors, however, were not convinced by the CBI’s conclusion that Roy alone had raped and murdered the young medic. They demanded that others involved in the crime should also be brought to justice.

The Calcutta High Court also asked the CBI to take over from a Special Investigation Team of the Kolkata Police the probe into alleged corruption and financial irregularities at the RGKMCH. The CBI arrested Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of the RGKMCH, and a few others in connection with the probe into allegations of financial misconduct. Ghosh was later arrested for allegedly destroying evidence after the rape and murder. So was a cop who was in charge of the local police station.

Dr Halder and other protesting junior doctors expressed concerns that Ghosh could be acquitted due to the sluggishness of the CBI.

The junior doctors in West Bengal had over the past few weeks agitated against the state government, first with a cease-work stir, then with a sit-in demonstration, followed by a second round of cease-work stir and finally a fast-unto-death. They have been pressing for the safety and security of the doctors and other workers at government-run hospitals in the state and the end of the culture of intimidation in the public sector healthcare system. They finally withdrew the fast-unto-death stir following a second meeting with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on October 22.