Sunday, 19 January 2025
Sunday, 19 January 2025
Junior doctors from across Bengal gathered outside the Sealdah Civil and Criminal Court on Saturday as a CBI court pronounced its verdict in the rape and murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9.
Judge Anirban Das found Sanjay Roy, a Kolkata Police civic volunteer, guilty in the case that rocked Kolkata, Bengal and the country with widespread protests.
Although the court found Roy guilty, the junior doctors were not satisfied.
They demanded answers to what they call unresolved questions in the investigation, and highlighted what the called lapses by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
“We have been saying this from the very first day that more than one person is involved in this crime,” Dr Aniket Mahato, a junior doctor from RG Kar who has become a face of the junior doctors’ movement for justice for their colleague, told The Telegraph Online.
“What happened to this angle of investigation in the case? Ok, we accept that Sanjay Roy is the main accused in the crime, but it cannot be his sole work. Second, the CBI said in its primary chargesheet that evidence has been tampered with – what happened to that?”
He added: “What action will be taken against this evidence tampering, we still do not know. Is [RG Kar Medical College former principal] Sandeep Ghosh totally free from this case? Why is the supplementary chargesheet not being filed? When will it be filed? Who are the people involved in the case apart from Sanjay Roy? We want to know.”
He said the doctors would continue their protests.
“We are speaking against the CBI inquiry all the time. Our college environment is still more or less the same. CCTV cameras have been installed but the work is on hold now; no progress as such has been made. Till now, the emergency department where the crime took place has no CCTV. There is no visible change in the health infrastructure of the state.” he said.
Dr S. Das, a third-year postgraduate trainee student at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, maintained that there still were a lot of loopholes in the case.
“And a lot of questions are still unanswered and hence we are gathering outside the court today,” Das told The Telegraph Online on Saturday morning.
“We are not at all satisfied with the investigation and we do not believe that this is the work of one person as being said. The CBI said that the crime scene was altered but after that there was no investigation into it. This also remains unclear till now. No extra chargesheets were also filed,” he said.
The protesting doctors are highlighting what the parents of the victim maintain – that the crime cannot be the work of one man.
The parents have in interview after interview expressed their frustration over the handling of the case and alleged the involvement of other people.
“The way the investigation has taken place in this case is not at all satisfactory,” Dr Bipresh Chakraborty, a senior resident at SSKM hospital, told The Telegraph Online.
“We understand that Sanjay Roy is involved in the case, but apart from him other people are also involved in the crime. Sandip Ghosh and his entire lobby is involved in organising this institutional crime and also the people who used to empower this Sandip Ghosh – the bigger names as the confidence must be coming from some powerful source who gave him this privilege and courage,” Chakraborty insisted.
“At the end of the day a mother and father lost their daughter. What can be more painful than this? We want people to know that we are not leaving the battleground and we are not satisfied with the investigation,” he added.
