Within 24 hours of a Sealdah court sentencing Sanjoy Roy to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of a junior doctor at the state-run RG Kar College and Hospital on August 9 last year, the West Bengal government on Tuesday approached the Calcutta High Court to challenge the trial court’s order.
The government’s swift move comes in the backdrop of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee publicly announcing that she was “not satisfied” with the life imprisonment sentence and her government would file an appeal in the High Court to seek death penalty.
State Advocate General Kishore Datta mentioned the matter on Tuesday morning in the Division Bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Md Shabbar Rashidi, and sought the court’s permission to file an appeal challenging the order passed by the trial court.
Dutta told the court that they were not satisfied with the life imprisonment sentence and would seek capital punishment for the convict.
The Bench allowed the Advocate General to file the appeal. Sources said that once the official formalities are over and the filing of the appeal is complete, the hearing in the matter will begin in the High Court. According to PTI unnamed sources maintained that the judicial process pertaining to the matter could start this week itself “if the due process of filing the appeal was completed by the end of the day on Tuesday”.
Additional Sessions Judge Anirban Das of the Sealdah court while sentencing Sanjoy Roy to life imprisonment “till his last breath”, said it was not the “rarest of rare case”. The court also ordered Roy to pay a Rs 50,000 fine and directed the state government to pay compensation of Rs 17 lakh to the family of the deceased doctor.
Roy, a 35-year-old civic volunteer with Kolkata Police, was convicted on Saturday under sections 64 (punishment for rape), 66 (punishment for causing death or a persistent vegetative state to a woman) and 101 (1) (murder).
Meanwhile, the chief minister on Tuesday reiterated that she was not satisfied with the sentencing and advocated harsher punishment for heinous crimes.
“In the RG Kar case, we had called for capital punishment. Jodi keu danobik, jodi keu pasobik hoy, samaj ki manobik hote pare? (If someone is a monster, then how can society show humanity?) The society must be made humane towards our mothers and sisters,” Banerjee said at a government event in Malda district.
Referring to the Aparajita Bill, passed by the Assembly in the aftermath of the RG Kar rape-murder incident, she said that the Bill proposed death penalty for such cases. “But the Bill is still pending as the Central government is not looking into it. We want this Bill to become a model and be implemented across the country,” she added, referring to the Bill awaiting the President’s assent.
Questioning the life imprisonment sentence, she said: “What is the meaning of a life sentence? In many cases, culprits are released on parole in two or three years even after committing heinous crimes… I am truly shocked by the judgment in the RG Kar case. I too have studied law and understand it… I did not like the judgment saying ‘it is not the rarest of rare cases’. I think it is indeed the rarest of rare, sensitive, and heinous crimes… If a criminal is released or not punished, they might again commit a misdeed.”
The chief minister claimed that had Kolkata Police investigated the case, Roy would have been given the death penalty. “But the probe was taken away from Kolkata Police and handed over to the CBI,” she said.
Roy was arrested on August 10, a day after the woman junior doctor was found dead inside the seminar hall of the RG Kar hospital. Acting on a PIL, questioning the Kolkata Police handling of the case, the Calcutta High Court handed the investigation to the CBI.