Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, where a trainee doctor was allegedly raped and murdered on August 9, was on Tuesday sent to eight days of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) custody.
Sandip Ghosh and three others were brought to Alipore Judges Court in connection with RG Kar Medical College and Hospital financial irregularities case on Tuesday. They were arrested by the CBI anti-corruption branch last night.
Within an hour of Ghosh’s arrest, CBI officers picked up his security guard and two vendors who used to supply materials to the hospital where the body of a woman medic, who was raped and murdered, was found on August 9.
The Calcutta High Court on August 23 ordered the transfer of the probe into the alleged financial irregularities at the hospital from a state-constituted Special Investigation Team (SIT) to the CBI.
The direction came in response to a petition by former deputy superintendent of the facility, Dr Akhtar Ali, who prayed for a probe by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into multiple counts of alleged financial misconduct at the state-run institute during the tenure of its former principal.
Sandip Ghosh was questioned for the 15th day at CBI’s Salt Lake office over the alleged rape and murder of the RG Kar hospital post-graduate trainee. He was later escorted to the the agency's Nizam Palace office in Kolkata which houses its anti-corruption wing and was shown as arrested.
While Sandip Ghosh has not been arrested in connection with the rape and murder of the trainee doctor, whose body was found at RG Kar Medical College on August 9, his is the second arrest in the ghastly crime fallout scenario that took place 24 days after the crime was committed. Three others were taken into custody within an hour of Sandip Ghosh’s arrest.
Earlier, a civic volunteer, Sanjoy Roy, was arrested by the Kolkata Police and handed over to the central agency in connection with the medic’s alleged rape and murder. The CBI is also investing the rape-murder case on an order of the high court.
Ghosh served as principal of RG Kar Medical College from February 2021 to September 2023. He was transferred from RG Kar in October that year but inexplicably returned to that position within a month. He held his position at the hospital till the day the hospital doctor was found murdered.
Ali had moved the High Court amid fervent speculations in the public domain on whether the alleged rampant corruption at the institution was in any way connected to the RG Kar medic’s death, with possibilities of the victim remaining privy to those and threatening exposure.
Ali had also alleged that his complaints before the state vigilance commission and anti-corruption bureau filed over a year ago against Ghosh yielded little results and, instead, led to his own transfer from the institution.
In his plea before the high court, Ali accused Ghosh of illegal sale of unclaimed corpses, trafficking of biomedical waste and passing tenders against commission paid by medicine and medical equipment suppliers.
Ali also alleged that students were pressured to pay amounts ranging between Rs.5 and 8 lakhs to pass exams.
(With PTI inputs)
