New Delhi:
The Supreme Court is slated to hear on Wednesday the matter where it has taken suo moto cognisance of the rape and murder of a junior doctor at the state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.
As per the causelist published on the website of the supreme court, a bench of CJI Sanjiv Khanna comprising Justices Sanjay Kumar and KV Viswanathan will resume hearing the suo moto case on January 22.
Meanwhile, the West Bengal government on Tuesday approached the Calcutta High Court, challenging the verdict of a Kolkata special court awarding life imprisonment to Sanjay Roy, the sole accused and convict in the rape and murder case of the woman doctor.
A division bench of Justices Debangshu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi of the Calcutta High Court admitted the state government’s appeal seeking a death penalty for the convict.
A day before, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that the Bengal government would move the Calcutta High Court challenging the quantum of the sentence and the state government would be seeking the death penalty for the convict.
“I am convinced that it is indeed a rarest of rare cases which demands capital punishment. We want to insist upon the death penalty in this most sinister and sensitive case,” the Chief Minister said in a statement.
While pronouncing the quantum of the sentence, special court judge Anirban Das said that the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) contention that Roy’s offence in the matter was “the rarest and rare crimes” was not tenable. Hence, the judge observed that instead of the “death penalty”, Roy, an erstwhile civic volunteer attached to Kolkata Police, be sentenced to “life imprisonment”.
Apart from that a fine of Rs 50,000 was also imposed on Roy. The special court, at the same time, directed the West Bengal government to pay a compensation of Rs 17 lakh to the family of the victim. It observed that since the victim was raped and murdered at her workplace, which is a state-government entity, the West Bengal government is legally bound to pay compensation to the victim’s family.
In an earlier hearing held in November 2024, the Supreme Court had remarked that it would not pass any direction to transfer the trial of the ghastly rape and murder case outside West Bengal. A bench, headed by then CJI D.Y. Chandrachud, turned down the oral prayer made by a lawyer seeking transfer of trial outside West Bengal.
“Yes, we have transferred cases (of gender violence) in Manipur. But we are not doing anything like that here,” it had remarked. The supreme court had noted that the trial will commence on November 11 at a special court in Kolkata after charges were framed against the “sole prime accused” in the case, Sanjay Roy.
The process of the framing of charges was completed on November 4, exactly 87 days after the body of the woman junior doctor was discovered at a seminar hall within the state-run R.G. Kar premises on the morning of August 9, 2024.
In October, the CBI filed its first charge sheet against Sanjay Roy, a civic volunteer with Kolkata Police, in the alleged rape and murder case. In the charge sheet, the CBI did not rule out the possibilities of a larger conspiracy behind the macabre crime that prompted alleged events of tampering and altering of evidence during the initial phase of the investigation which was carried out by Kolkata Police.
Besides Sanjay Roy, two others arrested by the CBI officials in the matter are RG Kar Medical College and Hospital’s former Principal, Sandip Ghosh, and the former SHO of Tala Police Station, Abhijit Mondal. RG Kar comes under the jurisdiction of Tala Police Station.
The main charges against Ghosh and Mondal are for misleading the investigation when the Kolkata Police were probing the matter before it was handed over to CBI by the Calcutta High Court. Both have been accused of tampering with evidence in the case.
Taking suo moto cognisance of the rape and murder case of the junior doctor at the state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, the Supreme Court had termed the incident “horrific,” which raises the “systemic issue of safety of doctors across the country”. “We are deeply concerned about the fact that there is an absence of safe conditions of work for young doctors across the country, particularly, public hospitals,” it had said.
The supreme court had ordered the formation of the NTF (National Task Force) to suggest measures for the security of medical professionals across the country, observing that the safety of doctors is the “highest national concern”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
