Doctors stage a protest demanding justice for a woman doctor who was raped and murdered at Kolkata's R G Kar Medical College and Hospital, near Ambedkar statue in Hyderabad, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
Kolkata: A court in Kolkata on Saturday pronounced Sanjay Roy, a contract employee of the city police, guilty of raping and murdering a postgraduate trainee doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital run by the West Bengal government in the state capital on August 9 last year.
The parents of the victim expressed gratitude to the court for convicting the accused but expressed doubt if such a crime could be committed by a single person. They vowed to continue their “fight for justice” until all other culprits are brought to book.
Roy would be sentenced on Monday, Additional District and Sessions Judge Anirban Das said, after convicting him of the crime, which had triggered outrage not only in West Bengal but also across the nation. The protest against the rape and murder of the doctor in the hospital had continued for several weeks and put Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government in a tight spot as the case had also brought back the focus on allegations of rampant corruption in the healthcare sector in the state.
The protesting junior doctors as well as several prominent faces of the protest, however, joined the parents of the victims to demand that other culprits responsible for the rape and murder of the young medic also be brought to justice.
The conviction of Roy on Saturday was highlighted by the ruling Trinamool Congress as a vindication of the probe initiated by the Kolkata Police, which had arrested him just a day after the 31-year-old doctor had been found raped and murdered in the seminar room of the Department of Chest Medicine on the third floor of the RGKMCH.
The Kolkata Police had been criticised by protesting junior doctors and civil society organisations as well as the TMC’s political opponents, the BJP and the CPI(M), for failure to conduct a fair probe and for allegedly tampering with evidence. The parents of the victim had filed a petition before the Calcutta High Court, which had on August 13 ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to take over the probe.
But, seven weeks later, the CBI had, on October 7, filed a chargesheet at a local court, accusing no one else but Roy, a member of the contractual support staff of Kolkata Police, of committing the crime.
The judge on Saturday noted that Roy had sexually assaulted the doctor. “You throttled her and covered her face, and she ultimately died owing to the attack,” he told Roy. “On the basis of these allegations, charges were framed against you (Roy) under sections 64, 66 and 103(1) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS),” he said, adding, “On the basis of the statements of the witnesses and the documents produced in this matter, your guilt has been proved, and you are being pronounced guilty.”
“I always wear a rudraksh garland around my neck. If I had committed the crime, it would have snapped,” Roy told the judge, who said that the court would hear the statement of the convicted before pronouncing the sentence on Monday.
The judge noted that the case of the prosecution stood on circumstantial evidence.
Roy could be sentenced to imprisonment, which might extend to life imprisonment, or to death under the BNS provisions he had been convicted under.
“We have said repeatedly that the R G Kar incident is horrific and condemnable. The CM (Mamata Banerjee) herself condemned it in the strongest words possible and demanded the death penalty for the culprit. (The) Kolkata Police arrested the perpetrator within 24 hours,” Kunal Ghosh, a senior leader and spokesperson of the TMC, said.
“However,” he added, “a section of people tried to spread misinformation and mislead the public to fulfil their vested political and personal interests.”
Ghosh pointed it out that the West Bengal police had acted swiftly in three other cases of rape and murder, which followed the one at the RGKMCH, and the perpetrators in all three cases had been awarded death sentences by the court. “We (TMC) want the capital punishment for the convict in the case of RGKMCH too.”
“We would have been happier if former R G Kar hospital principal Sandip Ghosh and former Kolkata police commissioner Vineet Goyal were also punished today. We must investigate whether anyone else was involved in the crime,” said Suvendu Adhikari, the state BJP heavyweight and the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal legislative assembly.
The CBI, which is also probing corruption at the RGKMCH, arrested Sandip Ghosh, the principal of the college, for alleged financial irregularities. Ghosh was also arrested by the central agency for allegedly tampering with the evidence, along with Abhijit Mondal, the officer-in-charge of the local police station. Mondal was released on bail on December 14 as the CBI failed to file chargesheet against him and Ghosh, who continued to be in jail. The central agency, however, filed a chargesheet against Ghosh for financial irregularities during his tenure as the RGKMCH principal.