RG Kar college ex-principal, Kolkata cop suspected conspirators: CBI tells court

Dr Sandip Ghosh, former principal of Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, and Abhijit Mondal, the local Tala police station’s officer-in-charge, are suspected to be part of a conspiracy hatched to destroy evidence in the August 9 rape and murder of a post-graduate trainee doctor inside the institution, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told a Kolkata court on Sunday, lawyers present at the hearing said.
Ghosh, who was already in judicial custody following his arrest on September 2 in a parallel CBI probe into financial corruption at the hospital, and Mondal, who was questioned several times by the agency since August 13, were arrested on Saturday in the rape and murder case.
They have been charged with tampering evidence, delay in filing the first information report (FIR) and misleading investigators during interrogation.
“The Shealdah court remanded them in CBI custody for three days on Sunday afternoon after our lawyers said they need to be interrogated,” a CBI official said on condition of anonymity.
Lawyers present at the hearing said CBI told the Shealdah additional chief judicial magistrate’s court that Mondal filed the FIR on the night of April 9 although the Tala police station was informed about the incident by the hospital staff at 10am. Police reached the crime scene an hour after getting the information, the court was told.
The CBI’s lawyers also told the court that the initial general diary (GD) entry at the Tala police station said a junior doctor had been found in an unconscious condition although the hospital’s senior doctors, including Sandip Ghosh, present at the crime scene at that time already knew that the victim was dead.
Three people have so far been arrested in the 31-year-old trainee doctor’s grisly murder which has triggered agitations across Bengal.
On August 10, the Kolkata Police arrested Sanjay Roy, one of its own civic volunteers, as the prime suspect. The Calcutta high court directed CBI on August 13 to take over the case from the city police. Roy was transferred to the custody of the CBI and subsequently he was made to take a polygraph test alongside Sandip Ghosh and five other RG Kar Hospital officials and doctors.
Although the Kolkata Police claimed that Roy made a confession, he later told the ACJM court that he was framed. Roy even refused to take a narco-analysis test.
Protests against the crime have intensified across West Bengal over the last 34 days. While the hearing at the Shealdah court was on, alumni from several schools, the agitating junior doctors from State-run hospitals, women having children and nurses took out separate rallies in Kolkata braving incessant rain. Similar rallies were held in several districts.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mounted pressure on the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) saying the arrests of Ghosh and Mondal mark only the beginning.
“More people will be arrested and the real conspirators will be exposed. Nobody believes that a medical college principal and a police inspector could have planned a crime of this nature,” Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said.
“The state government, too, wants the culprits arrested. Kolkata police made the first arrest. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee was the first to demand death sentence for the criminals,” TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said.