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regular-article-logo Monday, 09 December 2024

RG Kar rape and murder accused will be acquitted, lawyer tells Calcutta High Court, names city top cop

The counsel, Phiroze Edulji, said in court that present Calcutta commissioner Vineet Goyal had botched up the 2013 Kamduni gang-rape and murder case

Arnab Ganguly Calcutta Published 16.08.24, 11:02 AM

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The rape and murder of the postgraduate trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital will go the Kamduni way, a counsel who appeared on behalf of one of the petitioners for transferring the case to the CBI told Calcutta high court on Tuesday.

On June 7, 2013 a second-year BA student of Derozio College on her way home to Kamduni was abducted, gang-raped, killed and her body dumped in a field. Last October the Calcutta high court commuted the death sentence of two convicts. Another accused, convicted and sentenced to death by a trial court, was acquitted of all charges.

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“Be rest, assured, milord, ten years from now – because I have argued Kamduni in which the acquittals took place – this case will go just the Kamduni way. The accused will be acquitted. I will show it to your lordship how he will be acquitted,” said the counsel, Firoz Eduljee, before a division bench of Calcutta high court on Tuesday.

The bench, led by Calcutta high court chief justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya, ordered a court-monitored CBI probe later the same day.

Edulji’s comments were made in response to a query from the chief justice to the state’s senior standing counsel Amitosh Banerjee.

The chief justice had asked, “There is an apprehension that if time lost there is chances of something getting derailed. How do you ensure that doesn’t happen?”

The counsel Edulji had his reasons to support the argument. He was one of the defence counsels for those accused in the Kamduni rape and murder case of June 2013.

Edulji told the high court on Tuesday that the investigation into the Kamduni rape and murder case was led by the present Calcutta police commissioner, Vineet Goyal, who was then IG (CID).

“Because this very commissioner of police was the IG CID when Kamduni murder took place. It is due to his blotching up of the entire case that today Kamduni has failed. I was the defence counsel; I defended them. But today when I appear for the victim, this person has now been rewarded by being made the CP. This person should be put on compulsory waiting,” Edulji told the court.

After Wednesday night’s violence at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital an angry Goyal had accused the media and social media of running a malicious campaign which made the people of Calcutta lose their trust in the city’s finest.

“We are a responsible force. [Rumours have been spread that] evidence is destroyed. What evidence has been destroyed? You can’t destroy evidence just like that,” an angry Goyal had told the media in the wee hours of Thursday.

Two days before that, Edulji had accused the CP, then IG (CID), of botching up the case.

“He is the person who is responsible for the Kamduni rape and murder because he was the head of the investigation. He blotched it up completely. And the same thing he has done. What he has done? On the victim’s body he brought a scratch mark,” Edulji said. “In the Kamduni case same thing happened. They brought a scratch mark on the victim, we argued and this honorable court acquitted this person with a scratch mark. Same thing. Same modus operandi by this Vineet Goyal. Milord, he needs to go.”

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