Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday gave the Calcutta police’s special investigation team a deadline till Sunday (August 18) to solve the rape and murder of the postgraduate trainee at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.
The CM also met the parents of the 31-year-old victim at their residence.
“Every step is being taken to ensure that the culprits are brought to book and given exemplary punishment. If by Sunday the case is not resolved we have decided to hand it over to the CBI,” Mamata told the media after her meeting with the victim’s parents.
“Calcutta police is the best police in the world,” said the chief minister, who holds the home (police) and health portfolios. “Their [CBI’s] success rate is very low. The Tapasi Malik case in Singur, the Nandigram firing that killed 14 people and 10 others missing, the theft of Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel medallion, Rizwanur Rahman cases were all handed to them, but they have not been able to solve a single one,” she said.
When she was the main Opposition leader during the Left Front rule, Mamata had insisted on CBI probes whenever a heinous crime happened in Bengal.
The medical community in Bengal, specially the student-doctors across the city and state, has been on the warpath demanding punishment ever since the postgraduate trainee’s body was discovered on a blood-soaked carpet on Friday morning.
Though the Calcutta police’s special investigation team has made an arrest in the case, a civic volunteer Sanjay Roy, many of the victim’s colleagues and classmates suspect that more people were involved in the brutal killing. The body had 10 injuries, according to the inquest report. One person cannot have done that, claim those who don’t believe the lone-suspect theory.
Sandip Ghosh, the principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, submitted his resignation on Monday morning at Swasthya Bhawan, but the chief minister clarified that he is being posted elsewhere.
“He was upset with the incidents and everything that happened afterwards. He said he had children at home and felt humiliated at the insults hurled at him,” Mamata said. “We have persuaded him to take up another position.”
The chief minister did not clarify where Ghosh is being reinstated.
“We have also removed the medical superintendent and vice principal, the head of the department, the senior police officer responsible for security for negligence,” she said.
Mamata had earlier spoken to the victim’s parents over phone.
She had told the media that her government will seek the death penalty for whoever was responsible for the crime.
