The Calcutta High Court decision to transfer the case of the alleged rape-cum-murder case of a junior doctor at the R G Kar Medical College to the CBI is yet another blot on the reputation of the Trinamool Congress Government of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. In the heart of the West Bengal capital, the police sought to place a tight lid over what was a particularly heinous crime of rape-cum-murder of a young resident doctor. There was an attempt to show it merely as a case of an unnatural death. The court rebuked the city police for seeking to misdirect the probe. On Tuesday, a division bench of Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharya ordered the police to hand over the case to the premier central investigative agency, observing that the state administration “is not with the victim… There appears to be no significant progress in the investigation.” The strong remarks came on a petition filed by the victim’s parents. Five days ago the body of their 31-year-old post-graduate trainee doctor daughter was found in a seminar hall in the premises of the government-run hospital. The suspect, one Sanjoy Roy, was taken into custody a day after the crime. A civil volunteer, he used to visit the hospital regularly, ostensibly to assist patients.
Right from the word go, the local police seemed hell-bent on downplaying the enormity of the crime. They did not register it as a case of rape-cum-murder, choosing instead to register it as a case of an unnatural death. Nor did the principal, or any other senior functionary in the hospital, deem it fit to lodge even a FIR. Neither did the State Government think it proper to transfer the principal of the hospital-cum-college following the murder so that an independent investigation could be undertaken. Under public pressure, he was later transferred out but to another hospital. Only because the victim’s parents had the means to pursue the case vigorously from the moment they learnt of the gory circumstances of her death did the authorities care to conduct a proper post-mortem examination. Which indicated that there could be more than one attacker involved in savaging her. The cuts and wounds on her body, before she was strangulated to death indicated that she had fiercely resisted her attacker(s). As the news of the gruesome crime spread the outraged junior doctors at government hospitals went on spontaneous protest strikes. Normalcy at several hospitals in the national capital as also in other parts of the country was disrupted due to strikes by the resident doctors.
It is to be noted that almost all government run hospitals are managed at the ward level by junior doctors. Resident student-cum-junior doctors are the lifeline of the country’s healthcare system. They are the first ones patients are most likely to come in contact with at government hospitals. Unfortunately, periodically they have to bear the brunt of the ire, in quite a few cases wholly misplaced, of the family and friends of the patients when things don’t work out. While the fault may lie with the system, or the destiny may have willed otherwise, but invariably junior doctors take the heat as they man the front lines of the healthcare system.
Meanwhile, back to the Kolkata horror. It came as no surprise when the division bench of the High Court transferred the case to the CBI and also ordered the state government to suspend the college principal. News reports spoke of the close proximity of the principal to several ruling party politicians. Reportedly, despite complaints of high-handedness and malfeasance nothing was done to discipline the principal. The court noted that the principal sought to underplay the tragic death of the resident doctor, failing to not only lodge a FIR but going along with the police when it had sought to turn it into a much lighter charge of unnatural death. Hopefully, the CBI will be able to thoroughly investigate the crime and apprehend all the accused involved. Corrupt linkages of the principal and the state government’s efforts to put a lid over the crime too ought to be brought out fully. The investigating agency needs to avoid any hint of a partisan agenda while professionally going about its work. Without doubt, strong political overtones have already come to be attached with the case, but this should not deter the CBI from fulfilling its onerous duty to apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice. Meanwhile, there is merit in the BJP complaint that the INDIA bloc parties, led by the Congress, have been amiss in underplaying the enormity of the crime. Had the barbaric crime taken place in a BJP-run state, the party functionaries point out, the Congress party and others, including the TMC would have lost no time in organising angry protests.
Normally, any attempt to make political capital from such acts of sheer criminality is to be frowned down upon regardless of which party may be guilty of showing such crass insensitivity. Unfortunately, the system of governance has become so opaque and unresponsive that without the media and the Opposition parties taking up such cases these remain under the cover, with the police readily conniving with the ruling politicians in a bid to put a tight lid over them. It will be wrong to think it is so only in West Bengal. No, it happens in every state in the country wherever the party in power can get away with it. We have to thank the courts for intervening in all such cases.
