Civic volunteer Sanjay Roy is the lone accused mentioned in the first chargesheet filed by the CBI, on Monday, in the August 9 rape and murder of a junior doctor at RG Kar Hospital.
Roy had been arrested by Kolkata Police a day after the crime, and three days before Calcutta High Court transferred the case to the central agency amid allegations that the administration was shielding other powerful suspects.
The CBI did not officially reveal the chargesheet’s contents. According to agency sources, the chargesheet says Roy spotted the victim inside the hospital’s seminar room, pounced on her and, when she resisted, hit her, raped her while she was unconscious, and left her in a vegetative state.
The chargesheet does not mention gang rape, the CBI sources said, but says the agency will continue its investigation into the possible involvement of others in the crime.
The FIR lodged by the CBI had invoked Sections 64 and 103(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita that deal with rape and murder. The chargesheet has added Section 66, relating to injury that causes death or leaves the victim in a vegetative state.
The chargesheet says the CBI is investigating RG Kar principal Sandip Ghosh and Abhijit Mondal, then Tala police station OC, in connection with the alleged tampering of evidence and the delay in following legal procedures after the discovery of the body.
Both were arrested on suspicion of being part of a larger conspiracy behind the rape and murder.
“This is the first chargesheet in the rape-and-murder case. We will follow it up with supplementary chargesheets over the next few months,” a senior CBI officer said.
Agency sources said the CBI had inferred Roy’s involvement in the crime on the basis of forensic and DNA reports, statements of more than 125 people, and other evidence.
The chargesheet contains the statements of police officers, doctors and other staff on duty at RG Karduring the crime, the sources added.
The CBI, which took Roy into custody on August 14, said it had found cuts all over his left and right forearms “up to his elbows”, and an external injury to his right hip.
The chargesheet says Roy visited the emergency building multiple times on August 7 and 8, the sources said.
On August 8, he allegedly entered the hospital at 11pm and left around 11.30pm. He went in again around 3.50am on August 9 and left around 4.30am, evidence gathered by the CBI so far shows, the sources said.
The post-mortem report said the murder was committed between 3am and 6am.
A team of officers from the CBI’s special crime branch submitted the chargesheet, which is over 200 pages long, before a Sealdah court in the afternoon.
“Since this case is being tried in a lower court, the deadline to submit the chargesheet was 60 days,” a CBI officer said. He refused to go into the details of the chargesheet.
Asked about the chargesheet, one of the protesting junior doctors, Debashis Halder, told reporters: “What we have gathered so far is that this is a preliminary chargesheet. We will speak to our legal team and get back to you.”
The chargesheet mentions the post-mortem report, which refers to multiple bruises on the victim’s body and “hemorrhagic spots on the inner side of her epiglottis”.
The chargesheet says the CBI interrogated Apurba Biswas, Rina Das and Molly Banerjee — the three forensic experts who conducted the post-mortem.
The first two are members of the forensic medicine and toxicology faculty at RG Kar while the third is from the same department at NRS Medical College and Hospital.
The chargesheet contains details of the statements given by senior police officers such as Abhishek Gupta, the then deputy commissioner (north division) under whose jurisdiction Tala police station falls. Gupta has been shifted out of the north division since.
“The chargesheet mentions the statements made by the victim’s parents that were recorded at different times during the investigation,” a CBI officer said.
“There is a mention of the three calls the parents had received from someone who identified herself as deputy superintendent of the medical college and hospital.”
The caller had allegedly claimed the victim had died by suicide — one of the key reasons behind the charge that the authorities had tried to hush up the rape and murder.