Kolkata doctor rape-murder: Cover-up efforts loom over probes
Times of India | 9 September 2024
A file pic of the protest on RG Kar campus KOLKATA: It's been exactly a month since the PGT doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital was brutally raped and murdered at her workplace. However, although one person has been arrested, mystery shrouds the incident as parents, junior doctors and a large section of citizens continue to seek answers to basic questions that the establishment has found difficult to answer, raising allegations of a possible "cover-up".
The parents and the protesting doctors have been questioning the reason behind the 14-hour delay in lodging the rape-murder FIR since the body was found and has also questioned why the cops and the administration, helmed by a local councillor, hurried the cremation process."We wanted to keep the body for a longer period but we were pressured so much that we had to cremate her," the woman's father had said last week, while raising the graver allegation that a senior cop - DC North - had tried to offer him money after the body was brought home.
While cops and a section of the ruling Trinamool tried to share a video where the father is seen denying any money was offered, the man, in his sixties, said it was an old video where he was pressured to say so otherwise the probe would be hampered.
The attempt to demolish the restroom for doctors and a staff toilet diagonally across the seminar hall where body was found three days earlier, and the fact that the order was issued by the former principal just a day after the rape-murder, raises questions on the intention of the renovation work. It was later claimed that the demolition was done according to the doctors' demands and with approval of the state health department. CBI has also alleged that by the time it took over the probe on Aug 13, the crime scene had been altered.
In less than four hours since the FIR was registered, cops had arrested civic volunteer Sanjay Roy, accusing him as the prime suspect in the crime. But the postmortem reports hinted one needs superhuman strength to inflict the 25 injuries the woman had. CBI has even hinted at ruling out chances of gang-rape. However, neither her parents nor the junior doctors are willing to accept it. "They have been constantly trying to cover up and downscale the incident. First, the hospital authorities tried to pass it off as suicide and now they claim only one person has done such a brutal crime. We doubt if attempts are being made to shield someone influential," said a relative of the doctor.
What has further fuelled allegations of cover up is the vandalism at the hospital on Aug 14. Apart from the news of several arrests, the police have not disclosed much about this matter. It is also unclear what the motive behind the attack was that night. In this context, people are asking if "the attack was carried out with the major intent of destroying evidence?".
Additionally, cops were ca-ught narrating half-truths at Lalbazar press conferences. A video showing confidants of former RG Kar principal Sandip Ghosh, as well as cops, in the seminar hall after the body was found, triggered allegations about laxity in securing the crime scene. DC Central Indira Mukherjee had claimed the spot where the people had assembled was beyond the 40-ft section cordoned off and the body was beyond the view-cutter. The parents, however, denied the same.
The next day, there was another video grab showing a large number of people near the body, and Mukherjee called another PC, identifying each person in the photo. She identified a man in a red shirt as a fingerprint expert but IMA claimed he was Ghosh's aide Aveek Dey, an SSKM PGT. The photograph of another aide, Birupaksha Biswas, was cropped out by cops from the grab. None of the two were supposed to be at the crime scene. The cops have not held another press conference since.