Finally, we have a verdict in the case of the rape and murder of the RG Kar doctor. Sanjay Roy, a civic volunteer of Kolkata Police who the city force had arrested on August 10, a day after the heinous crime was committed, has been — as expected by most — found guilty. The Sealdah court, which pronounced the verdict on Saturday within 68 days of the beginning of the trial on November 11, will announce the quantum of punishment on Monday. Given the sections of the BNS Roy has been charged under, the minimum sentence will be a life term in prison and the maximum thedeath penalty.

The verdict has had predictable reactions. The medical fraternity, especially the junior doctors who led a movement that galvanised the people of the state between August and October, still believes the crime could not have been the handiwork of one person — Roy. Others with connections in the corridors of power, they say, were also involved. The Opposition BJP, which was a marginal player in the protests, has sought to blame the “destruction of evidence” by the Kolkata Police to explain the case of the Central Bureau of Investigation. The ruling Trinamool Congress has a “we-told-you-so” swag and has given the police, much vilified during the movement, a pat for having arrested Roy within a day of the crime.

Roy, on his part, has claimed innocence and said he was being “framed” by an “IPS officer”. The judge has told him he can have his say on Monday. The CBI, mum thus far, has indicated, or at least their lawyer has, that the investigation is still on. Does that mean a supplementary chargesheet is on the anvil? No one is quite sure. Their case of corruption against Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of RG Kar under whose watch the crime occurred, is continuing in a separate court.

So, is this it as far as the rape and murder is concerned? Is this the closure to a case that had shaken up the conscience of society?

Here, one must remember the bigger picture. Which is that the Augean stables of Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee need drastic cleansing.

The doctors’ allegations of poor working conditions in government hospitals are a stark reality. Corruption is rampant and has eaten away the system like termites. The nexus between mafia-like syndicates run by political power pimps and unscrupulous doctors is deep-rooted.

Never mind the court verdict or even the sentence awarded to Roy, the perception among many in Calcutta, irrespective of their political affiliation and ideology, remains that the Kolkata Police’s actions in the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the doctor’s body at RG Kar hospital on the morning of August 9 smacked of suspicion, a lack of empathy, inefficiency and gross incompetence.

Her parents and relatives had alleged — which they have continued to maintain — that the police “offered” them money immediately after they returned from the hospital on August 9.

The arrest by the CBI of the officer-in-charge of the Tala police station in connection with the rape and murder he was tasked to investigate was unprecedented. Though he is out on bail and charges against him are yet to be framed, the questions remain.

Why, for instance, was the crime scene not secured? Why were the parents not allowed to see their daughter’s body as soon as they arrived? Why did the post-mortem not take place outside RG Kar? Why was the FIR filed so late?

And then came the mob attack on August 14 when Calcuttans came out on the streets to “Reclaim the Night”. Such sorry a figure did the police cut that their entire role was considered suspicious and questions still abound as to whether the force was trying to destroy evidence. Just who were those raiders remains a mystery.

The government during its negotiations with the doctors sought to address some of their grievances. Admittedly not all corrective measures can be taken all at once, but as the recent death of the young mother at a government hospital in Midnapore has shown, the malaise remains. This is not to suggest that all doctors are above board — for example, the unscrupulous ones who are supposed to be on duty in their government facility but continue to flout the rules with aplomb are equally to be blamed.

That Sanjay Roy could carry out his grisly crime with impunity was possible because of the morass of corruption and degradation the RG Kar institution had become over the years, but especially under Sandip Ghosh’s tenure as principal.

The issue is that Ghosh could not have been running the facility like his fief without the backing of the state health department whose boss is Narayan Swaroop Nigam, the IIT-educated health secretary whose resignation the doctors had repeatedly demanded and the government stubbornly resisted. If the health department was unaware of the goings-on in RG Kar, then it is a case of utter ineptitude.

But Nigam is just another bureaucrat. Finally, the buck stops with Mamata who has been holding charge of the health — and police — department since 2011. It is unlikely that Nigam alone took the breathtakingly brazen decision to reinstate Ghosh as principal of Calcutta National Medical College hours after he had resigned from RG Kar on August 12. It took Calcutta High Court to order him to be sent on leave and it took a further three weeks for his suspension, that too only after the CBI arrested him on September 2 over corruption allegations.

Five months after the incident, has Mamata addressed the real issues? Has she gone into the heart of the outrage? Any workplace should be a safe place for all employees. This was not. For years, the systemic rot that was allowed to set in resulted in this. The rot was so deep that it gave the liberty to one man — or many men as the doctors continue to allege — to enter the seminar room in the emergency wing of a bustling government hospital and brutalise the doctor with impunity forover 30 minutes. Who will take responsibility? Is the arrest of the principal enough?

The chief minister is not naive. She would be aware of the urban angst over the incident — one can’t recall the last time a movement at the heart of a metropolis and state capital continued for over two months. Bengal goes to elections in a little over a year and Mamata would be eager to make sure the unrest ebbs by then.

Much as she would like to think of the verdict as a closure, the real issues unmasked by the tragedy of August 9 remain. The mess in Bengal’s health system has been bared and mere cosmetic changes would not be enough. Mamata needs a Hercules to clean the stables. The Greek hero diverted the path of the Alpheus and Peneus rivers for this. Alas, in Bengal, even the Hooghly can’t cleanse the muck.

There is something here for Mamata Banerjee, the state’s lead political act, to grasp and it cannot be that a person of her experience and grassroots connect does not: There is a difference between governance and good leadership and scoring electoral victories. She may well hold her grip on political power; the discordant ring of the sentiment of people, especially of this great metropolis, is quite another matter.