A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court on Thursday gave seven days to Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, to read the documents submitted by the CBI as part of the chargesheet in a case of financial irregularities during his tenure, saying “no heaven will fall in a days’ postponement”. The special CBI court in Alipore is awaiting the framing of the charges against Ghosh and four others named in the CBI chargesheet.
The Division Bench of Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Subhendu Samanta of the Calcutta High Court, while hearing a plea of Ghosh and others seeking postponement of framing of charges in the case, said that reasonable time needs to be given to the accused.
On Wednesday, a day after the single judge bench of the High Court rejected Ghosh’s plea, his counsel moved the Division Bench seeking postponement of the framing of the charges and cited that the CBI had recently handed over them documents running in “thousands of pages”.
The counsels of Ghosh and another accused Suman Hazra told the Division Bench that the CBI gave them documents, running into thousands of pages on February 1, while the date for framing of charges was fixed before the special court on February 4, giving them “hardly four days to go through the voluminous documents related to the case”.
“Give me reasonable time to paginate the documents,” senior counsel Sabyasachi Banerjee, who was representing Hazra, told the Bench.
After hearing him, Justice Bagchi observed: “No heaven will fall in a days’ postponement. Every accused has the right to due process. Also, one has to examine the requirement of the accused to prepare his defence. Twenty-five thousand papers have to be examined.”
Justice Bagchi, however, also told the counsel of the accused that he does not have the privilege of dilating the proceedings before the trial court.
The Division Bench proposed that the accused may get a week’s time to go through the documents for filing a discharge petition, if he so wishes. “Seven days’ time to look into the papers, and file your discharge petitions. The discharge petitions are heard within seven days from the date on which the discharge petitions are given. We would like all the counsels appearing for the accused to sit together with the deputy solicitor general to work out a reasonable time frame,” Justice Bagchi said.
Of the five accused in the case, three have filed discharge petitions. Ghosh is not one of them.
The Division Bench said that it would monitor the proceedings before the special CBI court at Alipore, so that the discharge petitions are heard within seven days of being taken up by it.
“If there is any delay in the proceedings before the trial court, the lawyers will be at liberty to mention that before this Division Bench,” Justice Bagchi added.
“We do not want a situation where justice hurried is justice buried, but at the same time, we will keep the entire proceeding (before the special court) under our strict supervision,” the Division Bench said, adding it would post the matter for hearing before it three weeks so that the CBI submits a report on the progress.
The Bench said that it proposes to commence the trial as quickly as possible and after the charges are framed, the onus will be on CBI to give a trial schedule so that prosecution evidence is concluded within a reasonable time.
The matter will be heard by the High Court again on Friday.
Ghosh was the principal of the medical college and hospital when a junior doctor was raped and murdered inside its seminar room on August 9 last year, triggering outrage across the country. He was arrested by CBI in connection with the alleged financial irregularities and is at present in judicial remand. Ghosh was also arrested and booked for alleged conspiracy in the rape and murder case, but he was granted bail after CBI failed to submit a chargesheet against him in the case within the stipulated 90 days’ time.
Previously in the corruption case, the special CBI court had pulled up CBI for not informing the trial court about the Bengal government’s giving sanction to prosecute Dr Ghosh. The court had 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. In January the HC had rejected a plea by Ghosh for more time before charges are framed against him in the case. Turning down his plea, Justice Tirthankar Ghosh had observed that there had been a “systematic delay” in hearing the case on alleged financial irregularities.