The Central Bureau of Investigation has reasons to believe that a section of Kolkata Police officials had tried to create fake documents in the Kolkata lady doctor rape and murder case. In its remand letter submitted before Court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Sealdah the CBI has said that the officials at Tala Police Station which has jurisdiction over the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital where the August 9 rape and murder took place had tried to “create” and “alter” certain documents that could change the direction of the case.
Hearing a writ petition the Calcutta High Court had transferred the case to the CBI following allegations that the Kolkata Police was trying to suppress facts.
While seeking an extended remand for former Officer in-charge of Tala Police Station Abhijit Mondal and arrested former RGKMCH Principal Sandip Ghosh the CBI has told the Court that some additional facts had surfaced during the investigation of the two accused persons.
“During custodial interrogation of both the accused persons, new/ additional facts have emerged to the effect that some false records pertaining to the instant case were created/ altered in the police station,” the CBI letter said. The agency also told the court that the CCTB footages of the said police station had been confiscated and handed over to the Central Forensic Laboratory for analysis.
The parents of the victim had also alleged similar things before the media. “We had told repeatedly how we were given three versions of “sudden illness, suicide and then death over telephone before we rushed to the hospital … then in the hospital we were made to sit for three hours while her mother literally held their feet to let her see her daughter’s face once,” said the father of the victim.
The ordeal did not end there as the old parents were made to sit in the Tala Police Station for more than an hour and were repeatedly monitored while they wrote the FIR. “They also forcefully cremated my daughter without our wishes … as we wanted to get a second postmortem conducted” as the autopsy was done post sundown defying the general protocol in the Kolkata Police manual, they alleged.
Incidentally, the postmortem was done not on the request of a DCP but that of a sub-inspector, a letter recovered by the CBI showed. The CBI has been trying to find out who was instructing Mondal and also who was instructing the person and who was instructing the arrested police officer and for what reason, sources said adding “everything will become clear in the coming weeks when the call details and forensic reports come up.”
Both Ghosh and Mondal were arrested by the CBI on charges of tampering evidence whereas prime accused Sanjoy Das was arrested by the Kolkata Police for perpetrating the rape and murder of a post graduate lady doctor of Chest Medicine Department of the Hospital.
Though Ghosh has been arrested for tampering evidence, the CBI is not ruling out his culpability in the original crime, inside sources said adding the investigators were also working on additional inputs that have come up from the initial analysis of the former Principal’s mobile tower locations.
According to sources, Ghosh’s tower location was in and around the hospital in the wee hours of August 9 when the crime took place. Besides, some video footages allegedly found in the mobile phone of the victim also have increased suspicion on Ghosh, sources said adding, “the victim doctor was not simply raped and murdered but he might have been raped and murdered as a part of a larger plan to eliminate her because she had come to know about some secret and was coming in the way of something very serious and illegal that was being done by these people.”
Sources said that the victim had even once approached Ghosh with some complaints on how some illegal acts including distribution of spurious and below quality drugs were taking place inside the hospital. The Principal had allegedly asked her to stop being too much inquisitive about things lest her career got ruined.
Meanwhile, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday held a long meeting with the top Health Department officials including the principals of the 33 medical colleges, the Chief Medical Officers and members of the police force with a view to improve the health infrastructure of the State including the security network as was being demanded be the junior doctors.
“We discussed and took decisions on several issues including installation of CCTVs, construction of washrooms and restrooms in hospitals and conducting security audits from time to time … we have earmarked Rs 100 crore for improvement of security infrastructure,” the Chief Minister said.
