R G Kar case: Mamata govt moves Calcutta High Court to seek death penalty for convict Sanjay Roy

The state government sought the high court's permission to file the appeal challenging the order passed by Additional District and Sessions Judge in Sealdah, Anirban Das, on Monday.

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal on Tuesday made a move to file an appeal at the Calcutta High Court challenging the decision of an Additional District and Sessions Judge to spare the man convicted of raping and murdering a postgraduate trainee doctor last year the noose.

A day after Additional District and Sessions Judge Anirban Das sentenced Sanjay Roy, who was accused of raping and killing the 31-year-old doctor at a hospital in Kolkata on August 9, to life imprisonment, the state government’s advocate general, Kishor Datta, moved a division bench of the Calcutta High Court, seeking to file an appeal pleading for the death penalty for the convict. The division bench presided by Justice Debangsu Basak granted the state government permission to file an appeal against the judgment of the Additional District and Sessions Judge.

“I strongly feel that it is a heinous crime that warrants capital punishment. We will plead for capital punishment of the convict at the High Court now,” Banerjee posted on X after Das on Monday rejected the plea of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for the death penalty for Roy and observed that it was not one of the rarest of the rare case and hence the convict did not deserve capital punishment.

The chief minister conveyed her displeasure over the probe by the CBI into the rape and murder of the postgraduate trainee doctor at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.

“I have been seeking capital punishment for the accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case. If someone is so demonic and barbaric, how can society remain humane? We passed the Aparajita Bill, but the Centre is sitting on it,” Banerjee said at a public meeting in Malda. “We have included the death penalty in that Bill. We want this Bill to become a model for the country,” she said on Tuesday.

With the widespread outrage against the rape and murder of the doctor at a hospital putting the ruling Trinamool Congress government in a tight spot for several weeks, Banerjee’s government had on September 3 got a new Bill – Aparajita Woman and Child Bill (West Bengal Criminal Laws and Amendment) Bill 2024 – passed in the legislative assembly of West Bengal providing for the death penalty for rapists and murderers. She had also led a rally seeking the death penalty for the culprit responsible for the rape and murder of the doctor.

The TMC’s political opponents, the BJP and the CPI (M), however, on Tuesday described the state government’s move to file an appeal in the High Court as an attempt to reap the political dividends out of people’s sentiments.

“In the realm of modern justice, we must rise above the primitive instinct of ‘an eye for an eye’ or ‘a life for a life’. Our duty is not to match brutality with brutality but to elevate humanity through wisdom, compassion, and a deeper understanding of justice,” the judge, Anirban Das, observed after rejecting the CBI’s plea for the death penalty for Sanjay Roy. He added that a civilized society would be judged by its capacity to reform, rehabilitate, and heal rather than exact revenge.