A special CBI court on Tuesday ordered the commencement of charge hearing in the RG Kar financial irregularities case, effective Wednesday, in compliance with the Calcutta High Court’s directive.
The CBI, which is probing the financial irregularities in the state-run RG Kar hospital in the wake of the rape and murder of a junior doctor there, had submitted a chargesheet against former principal Dr Sandip Ghosh, doctor and TMC youth leader Ashish Pandey and three others — Biplab Singh, Afsar Ali, and Suman Hazra – in connection with the alleged financial irregularities in November last year. On Saturday, the CBI submitted all the relevant documents, including the evidence, to prime accused Ghosh, and other accused in the presence of their counsels.
In the court, Ghosh’s counsel Joseph Rauf has alleged that the CBI did not cooperate, stating that his team received over 15,000 pages of loose documents on Saturday, but did not have access to the Presidency Correctional Home on Sunday to discuss them with Ghosh.
“On Saturday copies were supplied to us but we had no access to the Presidency correctional home on Sunday. On Monday, after my client got the papers in the evening, we did not get any instructions as he did not get time to go through the voluminous documents. We need adequate time to go through the documents and inspect the un-relied documents. I need time to get instructions from my client. From the inception of the case the CBI has not cooperated, we will also not cooperate.”
The counsels for the other accused also made similar submissions with regard to seeking time for going through the voluminous documents.
Senior counsel Sabyasachi Banerjee, representing accused Suman Hazra, requested more time from the court to review the extensive documents provided by the CBI, totaling over 15,000 loose sheets. Banerjee argued that the sheer volume of documents necessitates additional time for thorough examination. “The entire set there were 15,000 x 2 papers given without cross reference index. Lose sheets given to us. How can we fight this case? We want a fair trial,” he said.
Banerjee further submitted, “In the main case the subsequent chargesheet have not been filed. We feel helpless to aid the court. Electronic documents have not been provided to us. Ajmal Kasab had got a fair trial, if he can get a fair trial so can I. How can we argue for charge-framing when we have no clarity on the documents. Ask them (CBI) to give a list of documents.”
Countering the objections, the CBI’s public prosecutor stated that the prosecution has provided copies of the documents to all accused parties within the timeline set by the High Court. The prosecutor argued that there is no legal requirement for the documents to be paginated or indexed, and that the chargesheet itself contains a reference index.
The prosecutor clarified that each document is numbered in accordance with the index provided in the chargesheet, ensuring that the defense has access to the necessary information.
After hearing all the sides the Judge of the special CBI court observed, “This court feels that due to specific order of Calcutta High Court directing this court to frame charge in seven days shall be complied with, so at this stage petitions filed on behalf of the accused persons for extension of time to file petition for discharge is not stand rejected.”
Following this, Ghosh along with co-accused Singh and Ali, filed a discharge petition in court, seeking to be exempted from the charges leveled against them in the financial irregularities case.
Last week Thursday, the trial court had pulled up the CBI for not informing the trial court about the West Bengal government’s giving sanction to prosecute Dr Ghosh and Pandey in the corruption case, and ordered the central agency to submit in writing the reason why it failed to do so. The court had also directed the probe agency to bring all evidence, including electronic evidence, to the court and hand over copies of the documents to all the accused so that the charges could be framed and the trial could begin soon.
On Friday the Calcutta High Court had rejected a plea by Sandip Ghosh for more time before charges are framed against him in the case.