R.G. Kar Hospital Murder Case: Life Sentence Sparks Public Outrage and Calls for Further Investigation

Five months after the gruesome rape and murder of an on-duty doctor within the State-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, the prime accused, Sanjay Roy, was sentenced by a sessions court in the city to life imprisonment on January 20. However, the sentencing did little to quell the public anger over not just the crime, but also the State’s perceived attempt to cover up the murder. It elicited a groan of disappointment among the people, most of whom were expecting capital punishment for the guilty. Rather than dispel doubts, the trial of Sanjay Roy, a former civic volunteer with the Kolkata Police, once again brought to fore questions relating to the crime that the investigating agencies have not yet been able to find answers to.

Though the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating the case, had asked for the death penalty, the additional district and sessions judge, Anirban Das, did not view the case as “the rarest of the rare”. Citing several earlier judgments, including Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab (1980), and Swami Shraddananda vs State of Karnataka (2008), Justice Das pointed out that judges should “never be bloodthirsty”.

The order read: “A real and abiding concern for the dignity of human life postulates resistance to taking a life through law’s instrumentality. That ought not to be done save in the rarest of rare cases when the alternative option is unquestionably foreclosed. Considering the overall facts and circumstances, we hold that the present is not a case where it can be said that the possibility of reformation is completely ruled out. The option of life imprisonment is also not foreclosed. The case does not fall in the category of rarest of rare case.”

Justice Das pointed out that the judiciary’s primary responsibility is to “uphold the rule of law and ensure justice based on evidence, not public sentiment,” and that “it is crucial to note that there is no evidence of prior criminal behaviour or misconduct by the convict.” The judge in his order said, “In the realm of modern justice, we must rise above the primitive instinct of ‘an eye for an eye’ or ‘a tooth for a tooth’ or ‘nail for a nail’ or ‘a life for a life’. Our duty is not to match brutality with brutality, but to elevate humanity through wisdom, compassion and a deeper understanding of justice. The measure of a civilized society lies not in its ability to exact revenge, but in its capacity to reform, rehabilitate and ultimately to heal.”

While acknowledging the “immense grief and suffering” of the victim’s parents, “for which no sentence can provide complete solace,” he said “…the court must resist the temptation to bow to public pressure or emotional appeals and instead focus on delivering a verdict that upholds the integrity of the legal system and serves the broader interests of justice.”

‘I am really shocked’

The rape and murder of the second-year post-graduate trainee doctor inside the government hospital premises on August 9, sent shockwaves across the world, and the demand for death penalty for the perpetrators was almost universal, with the Trinamool Congress government of West Bengal itself being the most vocal.

Justice Das’s order was seen as a massive letdown, particularly by the doctors in the State, who have been protesting with their demand for ‘justice’ for the R.G. Kar victim. Koel Mitra, associate professor at the department of anaesthesiology and critical care at Medical College Kolkata, who has been actively involved in the doctors’ protests, told Frontline: “We are very disheartened that it was not found to be a rarest of the rare case. If one who is supposed to be a protector of the people (Roy being formerly linked to the police force) commits such a heinous crime, and that is not considered a rarest of the rare, it is very surprising. On the other hand, maybe there was not enough evidence put forward by the CBI to warrant the severest of punishments… There has obviously been tampering of evidence, which took place under the watch of the Kolkata Police.” The doctors, who have been staging a protest since last August, are likely to intensify their movement in the days to come.

Expressing “shock” at the sentence, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said, “In the R.G. Kar junior doctor’s rape and murder case, I am really shocked to see that the judgment of the court today finds that it is not a rarest of rare case! I am convinced that it is indeed a rarest of rare case, which demands capital punishment. How could the judgment come to the conclusion that it is not a rarest of rare case? We want and insist upon the death penalty in this most sinister and sensitive case.”

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On January 21, the day following the sentence, the State government moved the High Court, seeking capital punishment for Roy. It may be recalled that soon after the rape and murder at R.G. Kar, in the face of huge public outcry, Mamata Banerjee framed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, 2024, which introduced several amendments to the existing laws, including mandatory death sentence. The Bill was unanimously passed in the West Bengal Assembly on September 2, and is currently pending in the Parliament.

‘We want further investigation’

The distraught parents of the victim were not swayed by the Chief Minister’s insistence on seeing Roy hanged. “What is the reason behind this determination to get Sanjay hanged. We had told her when she first came to our house that there are others behind the crime, but instead of finding that out, she is busy trying to hang Sanjay. I want to ask the Chief Minister the reason for this. The Central Forensic Science Laboratory report also suggests that there may have been others. Does she want to send the message that by hanging Sanjay, I have given you justice? What we want is that there be further investigation and the others who are also involved in the crime, be brought to justice,” said the victim’s father.

Earlier, in the courtroom, when, in his judgment, Justice Das ordered the State government to pay Rs.17 lakh to the victim’s parents, the father of the murdered doctor told the judge that all the family wanted was justice for their daughter and nothing else. In his order, Das had said, “Their [the parents’] pain and sufferings cannot be compensated with any liquid cash but at the same time I think that as the death of the victim was caused while she was on duty, the State has also the liability to pay compensation…”

The victim’s parents, as well as the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front (WBJDF), which has been spearheading the doctors’ protest, have maintained that they believe Roy was not the only one involved in the crime. On January 18, after the sessions court ruled Roy to be guilty (before the sentencing on January 20), Ashfaqulla Nair, a junior doctor at R.G. Kar, and a prominent member of WBJDF said “We need to know who else was there besides Sanjay Roy. We were told of the presence of extra DNA; who did the DNA belong to… when the CFSL (Central Forensic Science Laboratory) reports have raised questions on the location of the murder, and that it could have taken place somewhere else; where could it have taken place. These questions are persisting in the minds of the common people… When people are helpless, they look to the legal system for intervention as a last resort. If this legal system is to be made an exemplary one, then all these small questions will need to be answered.” 

Justice Das, however, ruled out the possibility of anyone other than Roy being involved in the rape and murder. “…CCTV footages, the version of the accused during his examination u/s 351 BNSS, the contradictory defence pleas without any evidence, the DNA examination reports point the arrows towards this accused only behind the incident of rape and murder of the victim and the involvement of any other person behind the said incident can easily be ruled out,” Das said in the judgment order. The judge also had no doubts as to where the crime location was: “On scanning of the evidence on record in the light of the relevant exhibits, I have no confusion in my mind to hold that the seminar room, more particularly the dais again more precisely the mattress on the dais and finally the body of the victim was the scene of crime,” he said.

Roy, a former boxer and civic volunteer in the Kolkata Police with a reportedly violent and shadowy past, was arrested by the Kolkata police on August 10, the day after the crime. Roy has claimed that he was innocent and was framed. “I have committed neither rape nor murder. I was framed. I was tortured in custody and made to sign documents of which I have no idea,” he told the court. On an earlier occasion, while being transported in a police van, Roy had told the media present that he was being framed by former Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal, and the deputy commissioner of police (Special). Goyal, who was the Kolkata Police Commissioner when the rape and murder case happened, was removed by Mamata Banerjee on September 16, at the insistence of the protesting junior doctors.

Though Roy’s was the first arrest in direct connection with the rape and murder, neither the police, nor the CBI (which was handed over the case through a High Court order on August 13) have been able to find anybody else involved in the murder, even though the doctors and the victim’s parents are convinced that Roy could not have been alone in the act. In the chargesheet filed by the CBI in October last year, Roy was the sole accused. “It seems a little unrealistic that the civic volunteer would go and kill a doctor, knowing exactly where to find her, and do it in such a short time. Obviously, there were others involved, as suggested by the CFSL and postmortem reports. We want to see who the others were,” Mitra told Frontline. The protesting doctors have time and again expressed their dissatisfaction over the perceived slowness of the CBI in its investigation and its failure to name anyone other than Sanjay Roy in the first charge sheet. 

Expressing disappointment over the judgment, the victim’s mother told the media present outside the courthouse, “I do not agree with the judge’s view that it is not a rarest of the rare case… CBI could not prove it’s a rare enough case. It’s a failure of the CBI.” The ruling Trinamool Congress also could not resist taking shots at the central agency: “Recently, in the last three to four months, we have been able to ensure capital/ maximum punishment for convicts in such crimes. Then, why, in this case, has capital punishment not been awarded?” said the Chief Minister. Senior cabinet minister and Mayor of Kolkata, Firhad Hakim said, “Abhaya [the name given to the victim] did not get justice—that is what is most important. Her parents were misguided. If the investigation was in the hands of the State government, he would have most certainly been hanged.”  

Earlier, the CBI’s failure to file a chargesheet against R.G. Kar’s former principal Sandip Ghosh and the police officer Abhijit Mandal, who were arrested on charges of tampering with evidence in the case, made it possible for them to get bail. While Ghosh remained behind bars due to a separate CBI case involving financial irregularities at R.G. Kar, the former Tala police station officer-in-charge, Mandal, was allowed to walk out of jail on December 13. The CBI is expected to file a supplementary chargesheet against the two, but it has not yet got around to doing so.

‘Pillar to post’

The judgment has also brought to the fore certain questions that have been haunting the public from the beginning: questions that point to a perceived attempt in covering up the crime by the hospital authorities, and a section of the police. In his order, Justice Anirban Das “condemned” the “attitude” of the R.G. Kar authorities: “It is very much clear that the then Principal and the MSVP of R.G Kar Hospital were very much aware on getting the intimation… that the victim was raped and murdered inside the hospital premises while she was on duty. It is not clear to me as to why the then Principal or the MSVP did not send any official intimation to the police authority about such unnatural death,” the order read.

“It is fact that without post-mortem, the cause of death could not be ascertained but being the doctors why they did not consider that the said death was an unnatural one and it was obviously, the duty of the hospital authority to intimate the police. From the evidence as well as the documents proved in this case, it appears that no such intimation was sent to the police authority. The said act of the administrative head of the concerned hospital creates a shadow of doubt about the fact and it seems that they wanted to suppress anything and that there was dereliction of duty on their part. From the investigation so far conducted by the Kolkata Police and the CBI, no such evidence of latches on the part of RG Kar Hospital authority came out,” the order added.

The judge questioned why the “helpless” father of the victim had to run from “pillar to post to get relief and to lodge the complaint,” when the crime was first discovered on August 9, 2024. “It appears from the evidence of the father of the victim that they reached R.G Kar Hospital at 12.15 pm on 09.08.2024. The evidence of the PW (prosecution witness) -24 shows that the death certificate was received at Tala PS at 02.00 pm and the death was declared at 12.45 pm. It is not clear to me why at that time, the parents of the victim were not allowed/advised to lodge a complaint and why the police authority kept the parents of the victim to wait till 6.00 pm to lodge the complaint. It is not understandable to me why the police personnel of Tala PS kept everything behind a curtain and why such type of illegal acts were done by the concerned officer of Tala PS,” the order stated. 

The judgment also pointed at other irregularities and “illegal” activities at the Tala police station (R.G. Kar falls under the jurisdiction of the Tala police station) with regard to the Abhaya case. One such example of an illegal act can be found in the evidence of a sub-inspector (SI) of police of Tala station. “From his evidence it also came out that another GD vide GD No. 542 dated 09.08.2024 was registered at Tala PS GDE book which contained noting of receiving of information regarding unnatural death (UD) of a doctor at RG Kar Hospital. It was his admission that GD no. 452 dated 09.08.2024 was in his own handwriting and he had noted the same after coming back from the scene of crime by mentioning the time as 10.10 am, when he was not physically present at Tala PS,” the order read.

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The SI was apparently “instructed” to do so, though he “did not mention the names of anyone by whom he was instructed to do such an illegal act,” the order stated. From the SI’s evidence it also emerged that in the register of UD case, “one case number was kept blank and that the same along with the related form was filled up by the SI after 11.30 pm”. “I do not find any reason why such illegal acts were done by the concerned officer one after another and why he did not raise any voice against the same. It is very hard to believe that an officer in the rank of SI was unaware about the implication of such illegal acts,” the order said.

Though Roy’s sentencing has been an important development in the R.G. Kar case, it does not mean the beginning of a wrapping-up process of the whole issue. For the past five months, Abhaya’s rape and murder has had the State government buffeted by allegations of evidence tampering, corruption, murder and mismanagement. The government’s initiative to move the High Court, seeking capital punishment for Roy, is not likely to convince the protesting doctors and a large section of the public of its sincerity to get to the bottom of the sordid crime.

According to Manas Gumta, professor of surgery at Bankura Sammilani Medical College and former general secretary of the Association of Health Service Doctors, the State government’s reaction, of moving the High Court, is hypocritical. “The State government did not take any steps against those who had initially called it a suicide case; who had taken 12 hours to lodge an FIR… who had broken down the room adjacent to the seminar hall [where the victim’s body was discovered] and tried to tamper with the evidence to suppress the facts. Now, they are suddenly active in trying to get the convict hanged. This is their double-standard,” said Gumta.