Kolkata Police formally clarified on Friday that men and women seen inside the cordon around the corpse of the 31-year-old doctor who was raped and murdered at RG Kar hospital on August 9 were police or other personnel associated with the probe.

Deputy commissioner (central division) of Kolkata Police, Indira Mukherjee, who was part of the special investigation team that was probing the rape and murder before it went to the CBI, told a news conference all the people seen in photographs circulating on social media were members of the investigating team and authorised to enter the crime scene.

The photographs purportedly taken at different times on August 9 inside the seminar room on the third floor of the Emergency building showed several people standing inside the area cordoned by the police using hospital curtains.

Earlier this week, reacting to allegations of the crime scene being tampered with, the police had clarified that they had divided the seminar hall into two parts. The part where the corpse was found had a 40-feet cordon around it while the remaining 11 feet of the hall was open to others.

A photograph emerged on Friday that showed several persons present inside the 40-feet cordon raising suspicion on the police’s statement.

“The people you can see in the photograph are OC (officer in-charge) homicide, the videographer of the detective department, CP (commissioner of police) sir, FSL (forensic science laboratory) officials, additional CP-I, OC women’s grievance cell,” Mukherjee said showing a photograph.

She clarified that the photograph was taken possibly between 4.30pm and 4.40pm after the inquest of the body.

“The lady doctor is seen leaving the place, which means the inquest is over. So many teams were working from time to time, like the forensic team, the inquest team, the photographer,” she said.

The photographs in circulation were allegedly aimed at debunking the police’s earlier claims about maintaining a tight cordon of 40 feet from the place where the body was found.

Kolkata Police on Friday evening issued a formal clarification by holding a press conference on the questions raised.