The Calcutta High Court has taken a harsh blow at the Central Bureau of Investigation with long-running delays and little justice in the investigation into the brutal rape and murder of a woman postgraduate trainee doctor at the state-run R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. At the court, a division bench of Justice Shampa Sarkar and Justice Tirthankar Ghosh erupted when the newly appointed CBI team submitted a status report and asked for more time to conclude the investigation. Stressed by the long-drawn-out process, Justice Sarkar pointed out that there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the case and of course no clear answers to it and the process is ongoing in the courts.
Lawyer Jayantanarayan Chatterjee, representing the grieving family, raised serious questions in front of the High Court that the central agency had not thought through how to conduct the investigation in a proper manner. And taking this into consideration, the High Court ordered the CBI to reform itself and reconstruct the original crime scene for the first time and to establish the chronological arc to the events before and after the tragic incident.
The high-profile case had caused national outrage and protests by the medical fraternity when the body of the victim was found in the Chest Medicine Department of the hospital when she was on night duty in August 2024. The Kolkata Police first investigated and then the central agency eventually led to the conviction of a key suspect, but the family always maintained that there were many aspects to which the investigation did not address and a thorough investigation of the possible involvement of other suspects was required.
As the investigation is now under severe scrutiny the CBI has had to restructure its system of investigating and the former investigating officer has been replaced by Sandeepani Garg, Assistant Commissioner-rank officer of Delhi Police. A new Special Investigation Team led by a Joint Director is also in charge of reviewing about twenty volumes of case diaries and about one thousand pages of related documentation. Senior members of the new SIT, including the Joint Director Anurag Kumar and financial irregularities probe lead Manish Upadhyay as well as the newly appointed investigating officer, went to the seminar hall of the third floor of the hospital’s emergency building where the horrific crime took place. The next court hearing is scheduled for 28 August and the pressure on the investigators to get things done faster and be held accountable is high.
