As many as seven key witnesses in the Sushil Pal murder case have turned hostile, putting the CID’s competence under a cloud again.

Senior CID officers, asking not to be named, blamed the setback on chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s order to expedite the probe.

Among the seven were two who had witnessed the inquest at the Howrah district hospital. The two — Pranab Mitra and Nandadulal Roy — had told the sleuths that they had seen wounds on the gynaecologist’s body. “But during the trial, they denied having made the statement,” said Sandip Bhattacharya, counsel for Pal’s widow Kanika.

Another witness who turned hostile was Jharna Mukherjee, an employee of a Serampore clinic that Pal, a resident of Park Circus, used to visit.

She told sleuths that a day after Pal’s body was found on July 3, 2004, she had received a call saying that his bag was found on the banks of the Hooghly. But she backed out in the court.

Admitting that the volte-face by the witnesses would weaken the prosecution’s case, an officer said: “The arrests were made in a couple of weeks after the chief minister asked the CID to take up the probe. The sleuths, in their hurry to file the chargesheet, did not bother to gather enough evidence.”

The body of Pal, who practised at Serampore Walsh Hospital, was fished out from a canal in Sankrail. A probe revealed that he was murdered at a nursing home in Bally after he refused to conduct an abortion on another gynaecologist. Thirteen persons — including owner of the nursing home Biswajyoti Basu and the woman doctor, Piyali Das Mandal — were arrested. Piyali and six others were granted bail.

Of the other recent setbacks for the investigating agency, one was the acquittal of the two prime accused in the eight-year-old Oxytown murder case.

Another was the probe into the death of Tapasi Malik, 18, in Singur during the height of the anti-land acquisition movement. Insiders said the sleuths have not yet come across a single clue that could shed light on the death of Malik, who was allegedly burnt to death.