The CBI questioned Abhishek Gupta, the deputy commissioner of Kolkata Police’s north division, on Wednesday night in connection with the probe into the rape and murder of a 31-year-old junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9.

This was the first time the CBI questioned such a high-ranking police officer in connection with the case.

RG Kar is part of Gupta’s division. The parents of the deceased doctor had accused Gupta of offering them money after their daughter’s body arrived from the morgue.

Vidit Raj Bhundesh, deputy commissioner, detective department (special),
accompanied Gupta to the CBI office in Salt Lake.

Officers in the central agency didn’t want to speak officially about the questioning.

Sources said some of the questions were about the cop action after the police outpost at the hospital, a few metres from the crime scene, received information about the death of the junior doctor.

Gupta was also asked about the vandalism by a mob that stormed the hospital compound past August 14 midnight, sources said.

The deputy commissioner entered the CBI office in Salt Lake around 9pm and was inside even at 10.10pm, sources said.

Earlier in the day, the CBI questioned four junior doctors of the chest medicine department of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital to try and piece together the sequence of events on the morning of August 9, after the postgraduate trainee was found dead inside the department’s seminar room.

Among the four, three were summoned for the first time for questioning, sources in the central agency said. The fourth had faced the sleuths once, they said.

The sources said the three had joined their duty on the morning of August 9.

Besides the four, the CBI also questioned Molly Biswas and Apurba Banerjee, two senior doctors in the forensic medicine department of RG Kar who were part of the three-member board that conducted a post-mortem on the junior doctor.

“The questioning was part of the investigation into the rape and murder,” said a senior CBI officer, who refused to give more details.

The central agency has been trying to reconstruct the series of events leading to the discovery of the death of the junior doctor and the subsequent revelation that she had been raped.

CBI officers have spoken to some of the colleagues, including one house staff and
two postgraduate trainees, who were on duty with the doctor the night she was murdered.

Sources said Wednesday’s questioning was aimed at getting a fresh set of accounts from some of the junior doctors who were present after news about the death spread on a WhatsApp group of junior doctors of RG Kar.

Officers from the central agency have learnt that some junior doctors who reached the seminar hall on the third floor of the Emergency Building on the morning of August 9 were the first to spot the postgraduate trainee’s body.

A message was posted immediately on the WhatsApp group and within a few minutes, some other junior doctors gathered in the seminar hall, CBI insiders said.

The CBI also questioned during the day an officer from the police outpost at RG Kar to know when the cops on the campus came to know about the death.

CBI insiders said the agency was trying to zoom in on the sequence of events on
the morning of August 9 immediately after the body was spotted inside the seminar room.