The 172-page judgment by the additional district and sessions judge at the Sealdah court, Anirban Das, highlights the major findings of the investigation into the rape and murder of the young doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

It also addresses the doubts raised about the August 9 crime and the investigation.

The Telegraph produces some of the highlights from the verdict.

Last seen alive

According to conclusions drawn by the judge, the victim was last seen alive at 2.50am on August 9, 2024, in the seminar hall on the third floor of the Emergency Building of RG Kar.

According to the statements of two junior doctors — Gulam Azam and Arko Sen — who were on night duty on August 8 with the slain medic, the victim had dinner with them and two other junior doctors, Soumitra Roy and Subhadip Singha Mahapatra. The dinner finished between 12.45am and 1am.

After that, the victim stayed back to get some rest and the other four returned to work.

Sen deposed before the trial court that he went to the seminar hall between 2am and 2.15am on August 9 to fetch his bag. He saw the woman sleeping on a dais, covered in a red blanket.

Azam told the court he saw her sleeping at 2.50am. He went to the seminar hall looking for Sen, whom he needed to consult for an ABG (arterial blood gas) test. Not finding Sen in the hall, he went to the “sleep study room” and found Sen there.

Who saw the body first

Around 9am on August 9, Sen was told by colleague Roy that their female colleague had not joined duty and that she could not be contacted.

Sen, who had seen her sleeping in the seminar hall, went to the room and found its door ajar. He went inside and found her without some of her clothes and he “noticed some injury marks over her nose”.

Seeing that, “he panicked and went to the nursing station and met his colleagues like Dr Puja, Dr Priya, Dr Venila and he somehow narrated to them what he had seen,” the judgment says.

Sumit Roy Tapadar, the visiting physician of the unit under whom the victim was doing her postgraduation, instructed that the body be covered with a bed sheet.

Roy Tapadar examined the body with a stethoscope, examined her eyes with torchlight and declared her dead. He also suggested that the victim had been sexually assaulted.

Cause of death

“Death (of the victim) was due to the effects of manual strangulation associated with smothering and the manner of death was homicidal,” the judge has written.

He has mentioned in the judgment that during the inquest, the judicial magistrate noticed “bleeding from both eyes and mouth, injury over face and nail... injury in the left leg and belly, injury over left... ankle, injury at her neck, right hand and ring finger, injury over her lips”.

The inquest was conducted in the presence of two doctors — Diyasini Roy and Antra Burman. The doctors and the victim’s mother signed the inquest report.

About the bleeding from the eyes, the order says: “...in case of violent asphyxial death due to compression of neck there must be bleeding from the eyes and nose end there must not be any internal injuries…. The blood which came out from the eyes of the victim was not from any internal injuries, but it was due to asphyxia. There is no scope to disbelieve the version of... (Apurba Biswas, professor of forensic medicine at RG
Kar Medical College and Hospital who conducted the post-mortem).”

Time of death

Forensic medicine professor Biswas deposed that during the post-mortem, 185g of partly digested food residue was found and it did not have any peculiar smell. Biswas opined that given the quantum of the partly digested food residue, the time of death was “within four to five hours after the time of last meal”.

Sexual assault

The judgment has given weightage to the depositions of Biswas and Adarsh Kumar, a forensic medicine professor at the All India Institute of Medical Science, Delhi, who led a 14-member multi-institutional medical board comprising forensic experts, senior doctors and scientists that verified the findings mentioned in a Central Forensic Science Laboratory report.

The judgment concludes that the vaginal penetration was done by one person alone. “The nature of the injuries found over the body of the victim also proves that the insertion was done by a single person and in the same transaction. There was no evidence of severe multiple penetration, which is the sine qua non for any incident of gang rape,” it says.

One or more assailants

The judgment says the defence counsel and the counsel for the victim’s parents argued that from the nature of the injuries, it was apparent that more than one person was involved.

The judge says his opinion was based on the statements of Biswas and Kumar.

“I have perused the opinions... and also perused the still photographs of the post-mortem examination. I have also considered the nature of the injuries... and that the said injuries were resistance injuries. I have also considered the opinion... that the nature of the said injuries was simple… there were no fractures.... This evidence also suggests that the assault was done by a single person.

“On the basis of the discussion above, I am of the view that the victim was attacked by a single person and the said person committed the smothering and throttling as well as penetrative sexual assault,” the judgment reads.

Who committed crime

The judge has taken into consideration the CCTV footage that established the presence of Sanjay Roy at the trauma care centre and then on the third floor of the Emergency Building at RG Kar. The fact that a Bluetooth earphone is spotted in one footage and missing in the next has been considered clinching evidence.

Roy, when asked about the Bluetooth earphone, said he misplaced it in the male
ward. But, the judgment says, no witness saw Roy in the male ward.

Forensic evidence like DNA matching from swabs and hair collected from the place of occurrence helped the prosecution and the judge conclude Roy’s involvement.

The crime scene

The judgment mentions an argument in court that the seminar room was not the scene of crime or the place of occurrence. These lawyers relied on the CFSL’s crime scene inspection report dated September 11 that says “during inspection, the team did not get any evidence of possible struggle over the mattress and adjoining area of the Seminar Room”.

The judgment says: “It was also mentioned in the said report that save and except the wooden stage, no biological stains could be detected on the floor surface of the said Seminar Room.”

Based on the CFSL observation, the argument was that the absence of struggle on the mattress meant the offence was committed elsewhere.

The judge mentions that the CFSL team visited the spot on August 14, which is six
days after the commission of the crime. By then, the bed sheets, blankets and other materials were already collected by the Kolkata Police forensic team.

“The first time view of the said Seminar Room after the incident, came to our notice when the photographs [Ext-P- 47(14)] were exhibited in this case. It is fact that copies of the said photographs were not supplied to the Ld. Counsel for the accused or the Ld. Counsel for the complainant as the face and body parts of the victim were exposed there but they got the scope to examine the same at the time of evidence.

“On scanning of the evidence on record in the light of the relevant exhibits, I have no confusion in my mind to hold that the Seminar Room, more particularly the dais again more precisely the mattress on the dais and finally the body of the victim was the scene of crime,” Das’s order says.

Motive

The judgment says it was on “sudden impulse” that the accused attacked the victim “to meet his lust”.

The order says there was no known hostility or familiarity between the accused and the victim. “Then the question normally comes... why the accused committed such incident… To consider the same we have to go back to Chetla on that fateful night.

“The accused admitted that after consuming liquor he entered the hospital premises and went to the third floor. He could not place any cogent evidence that he did not go
to the Seminar Room, whereas there is strong evidence in the hands of the prosecution regarding his entry in the said place…. In that case, only option is that the accused took entry there and on sudden impulse attacked the victim to meet his lust. The victim was obviously not his target or that it was not known to him that the victim was
there in the said Seminar Room and the offence committed by him was not pre-planned.”