The Bengal government on Tuesday petitioned Calcutta High Court seeking “capital punishment” for Sanjay Roy, awarded life imprisonment on Monday for the rape and murder of a junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
Advocate-general Kishore Datta sought permission from the division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Md Shabbar Rashidi in the morning to file the appeal. Datta had broached the subject during “mentioning hour”, the period immediately after the court has convened and the day’s proceedings are yet to begin.
A formal petition was filed in the afternoon after the bench gave its permission.
On Monday, after the Sealdah court had pronounced the life sentence, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had posted on her X handle that the state would petition the high court demanding “capital punishment” for Roy, a former Kolkata Police civic volunteer.
“I strongly feel that it is a heinous crime that warrants capital punishment. We will plead for capital punishment of the convict at the High Court now,” Mamata wrote.
The victim’s parents and many junior and senior doctors, too, had aired dissatisfaction at the judge’s decision not to consider it a “rarest of the rare” crime.
Reacting to the state government’s appeal, the victim’s father told journalists that Mamata need not do much now.
“It’s her CP (commissioner of police) and ACP who destroyed the evidence. Is she not aware of this?” he said.
Later, in the evening, he told The Telegraph that he did not want to comment on the state government’s plea for the death sentence. “I think we should not be commenting on this without knowing the contents of the petition,” he said.
He added that the family’s principal focus remained on learning who else was involved in the crime.
“Our main argument still remains that we want the others involved in the crime to be identified and punished. We have already filed a petition before Calcutta High Court with this demand and (highlighting) 54 unanswered questions,” he said.
High court sources said the state government’s appeal would be put on the court’s cause list — the list of petitions to be heard on a particular day — within a couple of days.
The CBI, which probed the rape and murder, had demanded the death sentence for Roy.
CBI officials, including members of the investigation team, spent the better partof Tuesday consulting the agency’s legal team on their next step.