Monday, 20 January 2025
Monday, 20 January 2025
An extraordinary case reached an extraordinary conclusion that seemed to take it back to square one on Monday in Kolkata.
Sanjay Roy escaped the noose and protesters returned to the city streets with questions for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the rape and murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
The trial court which had on Saturday found Roy, a former civic volunteer with the Kolkata Police, guilty sentenced him to life imprisonment Monday in the case that has rocked the city, Bengal and India since August 9 last year when the doctor’s brutalised body was found in a seminar room of the government hospital.
On Monday, when Judge Anirban Das gave Roy an opportunity to speak, the convict again claimed innocence, stating he had been framed and had no part in the doctor’s rape and murder.
The counsel for the CBI and the victim’s family pleaded with the court to award the capital punishment to the convict.
More than how Roy escaped the noose, the anger was palpable at the CBI for its inability to unearth evidence against any person other than Roy in the crime.
“My daughter was working at a government hospital, but the CBI failed to establish before the court that this was a rarest of rare case,” the victim’s mother said after Judge Das of the Sealdah court passed the order in room number 210.
“Society has shown parents have to be influential enough to get justice for their children. This is the failure of the CBI,” the mother said.
Announcing the quantum of punishment around 2.45pm on Monday, the judge observed that the rape and murder of the on-duty doctor could not be called a “rarest of rare” crime – the criterion reserved for the death penalty in India.
The court also directed the state government to pay Rs. 17 lakh to the victim’s parents.
“We came here for justice. What will we do with the money,” the parents were heard asking inside the heavily guarded courtroom.
The judge said that he was only following the law, and they were free to decide what to do with the money.
Outside the court, members of the medical fraternity – who described the rape and murder of their colleague as an institutional crime – had already chalked out their next course of action.
The immediate fallout of the judgment was a sudden march from Sealdah to Moulali, with doctors, junior doctors, nurses and civil rights activists taking part.
“We have been saying the police and the college [RG Kar] authorities were involved in shielding the real culprits. After today’s order, we are forced to say the CBI has also done the same,” said Punyabrata Gun, one of the co-convenors of the Joint Platform of Doctors.
In its chargesheet filed before the trial court on October 7, the CBI had cited as evidence, among other things, CCTV footage that showed Roy near the seminar hall on the third floor of the emergency department where the doctor’s body was found, and a Bluetooth headphone belonging to Roy that was found near the body.
Roy was arrested by the Kolkata Police a day after the incident based on the CCTV footage. Apart from Roy, the CBI has not been able to identify other people who were seen on camera before and after the incident on the same floor.
The family has filed a petition calling for a reinvestigation citing lacunae in the CBI’s handling of the case. The parents have called out the CBI for not interrogating those present at the hospital on the night their daughter was killed, and other nurses and paramedical staff.
“This is shameful,” said Ashfaqullah Naiya, a member of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Forum, which has been at the forefront of the protests over the rape and murder. “We are criticising the judgment, not the judge. It is our democratic right. Our fight for justice will continue. We are not scared.”
A doctor marching along AJC Bose Road in the protest soon after the sentence said the CBI has clearly failed to establish that the crime was among the rarest of rare.
“Nowhere in the world has such a crime taken place where an on-duty doctor has been raped and murdered,” the doctor said. “The incident sent shockwaves across the world, but the CBI could not find anything more. They have not been able to submit the supplementary chargesheet yet. We do not even know where the crime actually took place. We cannot say justice has been delivered.”
The central agency is yet to submit any supplementary chargesheet against Sandip Ghosh, who was principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital when the crime happened, or Abhijeet Mondal, the former officer-in-charge of Tala police station.
The CBI had arrested Ghosh and Mondal and alleged they had tampered with evidence. Mondal got bail because the agency failed to file a chargesheet against him. Ghosh is still in prison in the case of alleged corruption at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
The Calutta high court had transferred both investigations – into the rape-murder and the corruption charges – to the CBI.
The doctors’ organisations that have been leading the protests have announced they will continue with the battle inside the courtrooms, and on the streets.
“When the Supreme Court was presented a report by the CBI in a sealed envelope, one of the judges of the apex court had commented that in his entire career he had never come across such a crime. After the judgment it seems that there has been a clear attempt to hide the real culprits,” said Biplab Chandra, state secretary, Medical Service Centre.
The SUCI (Communist) has announced a protest march on Tuesday against the judgment from Hedua in north Kolkata till Dharmatala in central Kolkata.
Roy will be in cell number 6 of the Presidency correctional home till the prison department authorities find a suitable cell for him, while the appeals in the higher courts are filed and the legal battle continues.
“We had submitted before the court that the Supreme Court has clearly outlined that even in cases of the rarest of rare crimes, other alternatives to the death penalty must be explored. The court considered our submission. The court has clearly stated this is not one of the rarest of rare crimes,” said Kabita Sarkar, the counsel for Roy. “The convict has the right to move to a higher court and we will do it.”
Though Roy’s family has refused to move the high court to reduce the sentence, one of his sisters said they too had questions. “There are thousands of questions to which we cannot find the answers.”
The victim’s mother said she had nothing to say about the punishment to Roy, but still believed there were more people involved in the rape and murder of her daughter.
“We want the real culprits to be arrested. We have nothing to say about the court’s decision [on Roy’s punishment]. From the very beginning we have been saying that he alone could not have committed the crime. We do not believe he was the sole perpetrator and we will never believe it,” the victim’s mother told mediapersons.
“We have not got justice yet.”
