Sanjay Roy, the man convicted for raping and murdering a junior doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar medical college and hospital, will be made to undergo “hard labour” inside the Presidency central jail premises and get a daily wage of Rs 105, officials told The Indian Express.
The Sealdah court has sentenced him to life imprisonment, while the state government plans to move the Calcutta High Court seeking the death penalty.
Roy is now allowed to walk and exercise inside his jail cell. He can also leave it as long as he remains in the cell block under the watchful eyes of special guards.
“He will have to undergo hard labour now since he is… no longer an undertrial prisoner. Since he is unskilled and has no prior experience in semi-skilled or skilled labour, he will be given a job with a daily wage of Rs 105,” said a senior jail department official.
“He may be given gardening work. It will be decided within a day or two. He will first learn and work as an apprentice. He will have to spend the rest of his life here,” the official said.
As part of a reform process, the convicts in Presidency central jail engage in hard labour such as gardening and making garments, furniture, puffed rice, and aluminium utensils.
Unskilled workers earn Rs 105, semi-skilled workers earn Rs 120, and skilled workers get Rs 135 as daily wages, which accumulates in a convict’s account in jail. This amount can be used to buy things from the jail, and if and when the convict is released, they take it with them.
Roy is in cell number 6 of the high-security Poila Baish cell block. His neighbours include former education minister Partha Chatterjee, an accused in the school jobs “scam”, and Aftab Ansari and Jamaluddin Naser, convicts in the American centre attack in Kolkata. Special guards are posted near Roy’s cell.
Jail officials stated that after the sentencing, Roy asked for three more blankets than the jail’s usual five per occupant.
Kolkata Police had arrested Roy on August 10, a day after the doctor was found dead. He was arrested from the barracks of a Kolkata armed police battalion. A former boxer, he became a civic volunteer in 2019.