The mother of the 31-year-old junior doctor raped and murdered at State-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9 alleged on Sunday that chief minister Mamata Banerjee was trying to stop the agitations taking place across West Bengal and also questioned the intentions of the Kolkata Police which probed the crime before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the case.
“She (Mamata Banerjee) said the culprits would be arrested as soon as possible but only one person was nabbed. I am quite sure more people in the hospital are involved. I think the chief minister is trying to stop the protests. That’s why police enforced prohibitory orders today to stop the assembly of protesters,” the victim’s mother told the media at the family’s home in North 24 Parganas district.
She was speaking in reference to the imposition of orders stopping assembly of four or more people at any location within 200 mt of Salt Lake stadium on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata where a Durand Cup group league football match between arch rivals East Bengal and Mohun Bagan clubs. was abandoned on Sunday afternoon.
Police told the Army, the organisers, that it would not be able to provide adequate force required for the event because of additional deployment at protest sites across the city.
Echoing some observations the division bench of the Calcutta high court chief justice TS Sivagnanam and justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya made while ordering the CBI probe on August 13, the victim’s mother accused the Kolkata police of trying to close the investigation as fast as possible.
“The police did not carry out a proper investigation. The officers did not cooperate with us at all. They only tried to close the case as soon as possible. They wanted to get the post-mortem done as fast as they could and cremate the body,” the victim’s mother said hours before the Supreme Court took up the issue through a suo motu petition. Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud is scheduled to hear the matter on Tuesday.
CBI officers carried out an investigation at RG Kar Hospital on Sunday and questioned several people, including Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of the medical college who was transferred after the crime.
Meanwhile, a series of protests paralyzed traffic movement in large parts of Kolkata.
Although the football match was abandoned, a huge contingent of policemen was deployed around the Salt Lake stadium in the afternoon when the police found that supporters of East Bengal and Mohun Bagan clubs would assemble in a rare exhibition of unity to protest the RG Kar Hospital incident. . The protesters were chased away and some were packed into police vans and released beyond 200 mt from the spot. The football fans, however, relentlessly carried out the protests and shouted slogans till late evening, braving intermittent rain.
Various doctors’ organizations and medical students from institutions across the state took out a rally from Shyambazar intersection in north Kolkata on Sunday. Actors and directors from the Bengali movie industry also took out a procession from the same spot in the evening.
On August 13, the bench of the Calcutta high court chief justice ordered a court-monitored CBI probe and raised critical questions on the role of the police and the hospital authorities after hearing a petition filed by the victim’s parents.
The order was passed a day after Mamata Banerjee, also in charge of the home and health departments, met the victim’s parents at their residence. After the meeting, Banerjee did not rule out the involvement of “insiders” in the crime even though Sanjay Roy (31), a civic volunteer working for the Kolkata police, had been arrested as the prime suspect on August 10.
