The responsibility of the investigation into the Kolkata doctor's rape-murder case has now been handed over to two of the CBI's top women officers with a commendable track record of handling a few similar notorious cases earlier.
CBI RG Kar investigation: Who are the officers?
Sampat Meena: As per reports, the overall charge has been handed over to the 1994 batch IPS officer from Jharkhand Sampat Meena who earlier handled the Hathras rape-murder case and the Unnao rape case. Meena, an Additional Director, currently is in charge of a team of 25 CBI officers.
Seema Pahuja: Sampat Meena, as per reports, will be assisted by Seema Pahuja, an Additional Superintendent of Police, who was also part of the Hathras investigation team. It has been reported that she would be conducting the ground-level investigation for the Kolkata RG Kar Hospital case. Pahuja is known to have received the Gold Medal twice for excellent investigation between 2007 and 2018.
Previous cases solved the CBI officers
Hathras case
In the 2020 Hathras case in Uttar Pradesh, a 19-year-old girl was brutally assaulted and gang-raped by four men of the so-called upper caste. After two weeks, the girl succumbed to her injuries at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital.
Unnao rape case
In the 2017 gangrape case of a 17-year-old Dalit girl in Unnao, the BJP leader and local MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar was given a life term in jail and was expelled from the party as well. He was also found guilty of the death of the girl's father in judicial custody, for which he is serving a 10-year jail term.
IPS officer Sampat Meena has been known to handle both the cases.
Himachal Pradesh: 'Gudiya Case'
Besides assisting Sampat Meena in the Hathras case, Seema Pahuja also achieved a conviction in the rape-murder of a Class 10 student in Himachal Pradesh in 2017.
In this case, a teenage girl went missing while returning from school through a dense forest track where she was abducted. Two days later, her body was found. A local woodcutter was found guilty in the case and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2021.
