The Calcutta high court on Monday asked the CBI whether it had ever considered more than one persons could be involved in the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital last August.
“Did the CBI think at any point of time multiple people could be involved?” asked Justice Tirthankar Ghosh when the case came up for hearing this morning.
The single bench of the Calcutta high court also asked the agency whether its investigation was on the rape and murder or the alleged destruction of evidence in the case.
“Who are the other suspects? What further investigation are you (CBI) doing? Second chargesheet has not been filed yet. What are you doing? Is it a substantive investigation or just destruction of evidence?” asked Justice Ghosh.
Acting on the direction issued by the Supreme Court, the parents of the slain medico filed a writ petition before the Calcutta high court seeking reinvestigation into the case. A trial court had announced life sentence to the sole accused Sanjay Roy, a former Kolkata Police civic volunteer, who was arrested a day after the body of the doctor was found in the morning of August 9 inside the hospital premises.
Before the next hearing of the case scheduled for March 28, Justice Ghosh asked the CBI counsel to answer whether the agency had investigated the matter under section 70 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita.
The single bench also instructed the CBI to submit the case diary.
The section 370 of the BNS deals with gangrape. The new law says, where a woman is raped by one or more persons constituting a group or acting in furtherance of a common intention, each of those persons shall be deemed to have committed the offence of rape and shall be punished with rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than 20 years, but which may extend to imprisonment for life.
The victim’s parents had several times expressed doubt on whether their daughter was raped and killed by one person. In an earlier petition filed after the trial court verdict last February, the parents had alleged the others allegedly involved in the crime were being shielded, while the convict was projected as the sole accused.
“What was the CBI doing all these months?” asked the victim’s parents before leaving for the high court this morning.
“We have raised 54 questions in front of the court. We want answers to those questions. The court will decide what to answer and how,” said the victim’s father.
The slain medico’s mother said, they have been trying to convince the murder of their daughter was an institutional one. “We have not been able to convince the CBI that this is an institutional murder. The primary motive was to kill her because she had unearthed a fake medicine racket,” alleged the victim’s mother.
The CBI has not yet been able to ascertain the motive behind the crime.
Samim Ahmed, the family’s counsel, said the state’s stand was not clear. “The state government wants to close the case, not justice. The court has asked the CBI whether the question of gangrape and others are being probed.”
Appearing on behalf of the Bengal government, Serampore MP and senior counsel Kalyan Bandyopadhyay said, the state has no objection to any direction from the high court.
“If the court directs re-investigation, I don’t mind. If the court asks the CBI to complete the investigation in 15 days, I don’t mind, but it has to be according to the provisions of the law,” Bandyopadhyay told the court virtually. “Why is the CBI slow in this matter?”
Sandip Ghosh and Abhijeet Mondal, the former officer-in-charge of Tala police station accused of conspiracy and tampering of evidence.
While giving the verdict, judge Anirban Das of the Sealdah court had observed the CBI had not been able to establish either the time when the crime was committed not the motive behind the rape and murder, despite ruling it out as premeditated.
