New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told a Kolkata court today that Dr Sandip Ghosh, ex-principal of Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, spoke to Tala Police station’s officer-in-charge Abhijit Mondal hours after a 31-year-old junior doctor was found dead in the hospital, and there could be an unholy nexus or network and that needs to be unearthed, the NDTV reported.
On Saturday night, the probe agency arrested Mondal for allegedly tampering with the proof in the rape-murder case. Dr Ghosh, who was earlier arrested in a financial irregularities case, now faces the charge of tampering of evidence.
Dr Ghosh and Mondal were produced in the court today and remanded in the custody of CBI for two days. The next hearing of the case is on September 17.
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“The FIR was registered on Saturday night. We have all the call records that indicate communication between the OC and Sandip Ghosh. There could be a nexus and we need to uncover it. We want to grill both of them,” the CBI’s counsel told the court. “There is no conflict between the police and the CBI. We want to dive deep and get to the truth of the matter. For us, he is not a police officer, he is a suspect,” the counsel pointed out.
The Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court raised questions about the delay in registering an FIR into the rape-murder. The FIR was filed over 14 hours after the doctor’s body was discovered in the seminar hall. The courts have raised hackles and asked why the hospital administration, which was then under Dr Ghosh, did not lodge a police complaint and the FIR filed so late.
“He was under an obligation to register FIR. The hospital made efforts to pass it off as suicide. There was lapse on his part. It was a sexual assault case and it should have been handled cautiously. He was in a conspiracy with other people,” the CBI told the court as reported by the news outlet.
Mondal’s lawyer responded by saying that there are allegations that there was a delay. “They don’t say whether I (Mondal) am an accused or a witness. There is no ground for arrest here. This is at best a case of alleged dereliction of duty. For that, a departmental inquiry could have been carried out.”
The CBI said that Mondal is not an accused in the rape-murder case, but could have played a role in a larger plot of an alleged cover-up.
After a month-long probe, these are the CBI’s first two arrests in the case. Earlier, civic volunteer Sanjoy Roy was arrested by the Kolkata Police in the case. Roy’s custody was taken over by the central agency after the high court shifted the probe to it.
