A Kolkata Police civic volunteer was arrested on Saturday morning for the alleged rape and murder of a young doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital that prompted a cease-work and street protests by junior doctors.
Accused Sanjay Roy had easy access to the hospital premises and entered the seminar hall — the scene of the murder — at 3.50am on Friday, around the suspected time of the crime, police investigators said.
They said Roy was captured by multiple CCTV cameras entering the seminar hall wearing earphones, and stepping out without them half an hour later. The pair of earphones were said to have been found at the crime scene.
Roy had walked past multiple security persons and other staff but no one stopped him, the police said after the arrest.
Junior doctors at government medical colleges ceased work across Calcutta and in other parts of Bengal demanding a fair probe and an overhaul of the security system at their hospitals where many women work through the night.
Students’ bodies held several protest marches, some laying siege to the busy Shyambazar five-point crossing in north Calcutta.
The protesting junior doctors at RG Kar, however, thwarted attempts by the CPM and the BJP to turn their agitation against the system into a political contest. The medicos’ blockade of the road in front of the hospital gates stalled traffic for hours.
The police were accused of roughing up several protesters.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Saturday asked authorities to arrest those involved in the murder and take steps to improve the safety of doctors within 48 hours or face nationwide protests.
“We demand that authorities act with precision and (within) 48 hours failing which the IMA will be constrained to initiate nationwide action,” the IMA, the country’s largest body of doctors, said. “An ultimatum of two days is given to arrest culprits otherwise IMA will take (sic) nationwide protests.”
Police commissioner Vineet Goyal, asked about the professional identity of the accused Sanjay, said: “To us, he is a criminal of the highest order and we would see to it that he gets the highest punishment.”
Sanjay’s mother Malati Roy, who lives at 55B Sambhunath Pandit Street, said “O toh pulishey achhe (he’s with the police)” when this newspaper asked about her son. “He rarely comes here.”
The 31-year-old, second-year postgraduate trainee doctor was on the night shift on Thursday and was found dead inside the seminar hall on Friday morning.
Sanjay has been charged with rape and murder based on a police complaint lodged by the young doctor’s father and the preliminary findings of the post-mortem.
Sources in the special investigation team said CCTV footage from the common areas of the hospital building had nailed Sanjay.
“To (further) confirm Sanjay’s presence in the room, his latitude-longitude coordinates between 3am and 6am on Friday were taken out (by tracking his mobile) and matched with those of the crime scene,” an officer said.
Police commissioner Goyal said the arrest was based on the evidence gathered, statements from doctors and other staff, and articles found at the murder scene. “We have found very strong evidence of the complicity of the accused.”
Asked about the motive, Goyal said: “We are also trying to figure it out. We have asked him…. There was no reason for him to be present there at that odd hour.”
The investigation is still on, the police said. “If the family members have any demand... we are following a very, very transparent investigation procedure here. If there is any demand from the family to carry out the investigation by any other agency, from our side there is absolutely no problem,” Goyal said.
A senior officer said a detailed scan of Sanjay’s call records and corroborative CCTV footage had established that Sanjay had visited the hospital twice within a short span on Thursday night.
“First he visited the hospital around 11pm on Thursday. He left in half an hour. He went somewhere, had a few drinks, and then returned around 3.50am and went to the seminar room. He left in 30 minutes,” an officer said.
The police said the questioning of multiple staff members and doctors at the hospital had revealed that the PG trainee and her colleagues had had dinner in the seminar room around 12.30am on Friday. They had ordered food through an online food aggregator.
“According to the statement of the doctors who had dinner with the victim, they watched Neeraj Chopra’s performance at the Olympics together and after that everyone except the woman left the seminar room,” an officer said.
The police said at least one witness had seen the PG trainee sleeping in a small hospital bed in the seminar room around 3am. “She lay under a red blanket, sleeping peacefully,” an officer quoted the witness as saying.
A police source said: “The post-mortem opinion is that she was killed about four hours after consumption of the last meal.”
Police sources said Sanjay had been recruited as a civic volunteer in 2019 for the disaster management group but never worked with that unit. “He was working for the Kolkata Police welfare board,” an officer in the detective department said.
Recruited by the police, civic volunteers are deployed to assist the forces in their duties. Sanjay, like many civic volunteers with the city police, was entrusted with assisting police personnel and their families during medical emergencies by coordinating with government hospitals.
Many civic volunteers across the state have been accused of using their position to engage in illegal activities.
Sanjay would use his connections in the hospital to allegedly extort money from hapless people with false promises of hospital admission and quick access to test facilities, police sources said.
Sanjay was produced before the Sealdah court on Saturday and remanded in police custody for 14 days.
The IMA, which has a membership of more than 300,000 doctors across the country, has also called for a detailed inquiry into “the conditions” that enabled the crime. “This crime is an index of the anarchy and the insecurity prevailing on the campus,” the IMA said.
The IMA said it “mourns the death of this precious daughter of India and condemns the existing situations which enabled this crime to be committed with impunity inside the campus. If safety and security cannot be ensured in the citadels of learning, it only indicates the incompetency of the administration”.
“The entire medical community of India is shocked beyond words at the brutal murder… (and) stands with the bereaved family and her colleagues,” the IMA said in the statement.
It said doctors, especially women doctors, were vulnerable to violence because of the nature of the profession, adding that the authorities needed to provide for the safety of doctors inside hospitals and medical college campuses.
Additional reporting by G.S. Mudur