Kolkata: The HC-ordered CBI probe into alleged corruption at Kolkata's RG Kar hospital took off with the agency filing an FIR naming ex-principal Sandip Ghosh, followed by coordinated raids on 14 locations that include his home and premises belonging to some health department officials and at least two vendors.
The FIR also names a woman identified as Khoma Louha, who is married to a member of the RG Kar hospital staff, and two businesses – Ma Tara Traders and Eshan Café. A CBI team scanned computers in the RG Kar administrative block where former medical superintendent and vice-principal Sanjay Vashishth had an office. They questioned several hospital officials, including Vashishth's successor Saptarshi Chatterjee.
A member of the CBI team said the search yielded "a lot of things", but didn't elaborate. The CBI action started when officers from the anti-corruption branch reached ex-principal Ghosh's four-storey home in central Kolkata's Beliaghata.
Ghosh, who faced CBI interrogation for nine consecutive days and a polygraph test, did not immediately respond to knocks on his door and calls on his mobile phone, officials said. It was only 70-odd minutes later that Ghosh opened the door to let the team in, the agency said.
Another CBI team visited the Vashisth's home in south Kolkata's Entally. After they started questioning him, some officers drove to his other home in Tangra. Vashisth has already been interrogated by the special crime branch of the agency in the rape-murder case. There was also a CBI search at the Kestopur home of Debashish Som, the former forensic medicine demonstrator at RG Kar. Som, once known to be close to Ghosh, was later taken to CBI’s office. Two hospital vendors were questioned, too. In Howrah, a CBI team reached the office of medical equipment supplier Biplab Sinha, owner of Tara Ma Traders.
Earlier, the Bengal govt bowed to pressure from agitating doctors and transferred RG Kar Medical College’s newly appointed principal Suhrita Paul and three other officials under scrutiny since the Aug 9 rape murder of a junior doctor on campus. Paul, who was appointed principal after Ghosh resigned on Aug 13, makes way for the return of Manas Banerjee to an institution he would have headed from Sept 2023.
The transfers capped a day of continued unrest, including doctors marching from CBI’s office in Salt Lake to Swasthya Bhavan, the health department’s headquarters. Assistant superintendent Biswas has been revealed to be the official who called the rape-murder victim's parents on Aug 9 and told them their daughter died by suicide.
SC flags 14-hour delay
Taking exception to a nearly 14-hour delay in registering an FIR following the rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital on Aug 9, Supreme Court peppered West Bengal govt with a barrage of questions: “Who was the principal in touch with to delay registering a complaint with police? What was he doing all these hours since the incident? Why did police take more than 12 hours to convert the report of unnatural death into an FIR? Why was the crime scene secured only in the evening?”
The questions of a bench headed by CJI D Y Chandrachu, following perusal of the CBI probe status report in the case appeared to echo an allegation that an effort had been made to pass off the incident as a case of suicide.
