Protesters near the Sealdah court on the day of announcement of quantum of punishment for R G Kar case convict Sanjay Roy. (Express photo by Partha Paul)
Pinky Anand
Jan 20, 2025 20:43 IST First published on: Jan 20, 2025 at 18:41 IST
While the ghost of the murder and rape victim of December 16, 2012, was hanging over our heads, another young woman suffered a similar fate – in Kolkata. There was immense media coverage of the December 12, 2012 incident in Delhi. Candlelight marches were held and laws were changed. For a while, we had started to believe that perhaps we had become more aware and conscious as a society. This was till we were faced with a gruesome incident on August 9, 2024 — a severely scarred body of a resident doctor was found at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in West Bengal.
What followed seemed like a déjà vu – the same protests, the same calls for justice and the same cry for women’s safety. The incident has brought to the fore the same questions: “Are women really safe in the streets?” “Are even doctors going about their work safe?”
The person arrested and declared guilty of the crime is Sanjay Roy, a former civic police volunteer. On January 18, the court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Anirban Das in Sealdah declared Roy guilty of rape and murder of the postgraduate trainee. The charges under which Roy has been convicted entail a minimum sentence of life imprisonment, while the maximum sentence can be capital punishment. The mother of the former civic police volunteer said she has no problem if the court hangs him for the crime.
While Roy has been convicted and found guilty of rape and murder under sections 64, 66 and 103 (1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, several questions remain unanswered. They lead one to wonder whether he was the only one involved in this gruesome incident. Roy claims he is innocent. He has reportedly said that an IPS officer was involved in the incident.
The incidents that followed the discovery of the crime are at the very least suspect. The West Bengal Government transferred the hospital’s superintendent. R G Kar’s Principal Sandip Ghosh stepped down on August 12. There were nationwide protests, which brought medical services to a halt.
As the nation watched, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) intervened. It noted visible signs of struggle on the victim’s body. On August 14, the Kolkata Police formally handed Roy over to the CBI. On August 15, the protest turned violent and a mob vandalised the crime scene. The National Commission for Women accused authorities of lapses and raised alarms that the crime site was renovated prematurely, leading to the possibility of tampering.
The Supreme Court had to take action and it was only by mid-September that Ghosh was arrested. He was accused of tampering with evidence. The FIR seemed to have been delayed. The Supreme Court constituted a 10-member task force to address the safety of healthcare professionals. By the end of the month, the protests had spiralled into political movements. The CBI, under intense pressure, raided the homes of Sandip Ghosh and several others connected to the hospital.
In the second week of December, a Kolkata court granted bail to Ghosh and Abhijit Mondal, the then officer-in-charge of the Tala police station, after the CBI failed to file chargesheets within the statutory 90-day period. It was alleged that Ghosh knew about the crime before he took action. Another doctor at the RG Kar College and hospital reportedly said that “the CCTV footage captured the movements of 68 people, yet only Roy could be identified. There were multiple DNA samples, and it’s impossible the crime scene was the seminar room — no biological evidence or signs of struggle were found”.
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The Sealdah Court has today sentenced Sanjay Roy to life imprisonment. It has held that Roy’s DNA was found on the deceased.
The verdict is welcome, it has come in quick time. However, I believe that the investigation has not answered all the questions.
The writer is a former Additional Solicitor General of India
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