Kolkata, Dec 31: 2024 was an eventful year for West Bengal for several reasons, but the incident that rocked the state and the country was the ghastly rape and murder of a woman doctor of state-run R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata within the premises in August.

The following sequence of events made the entire investigation process a mere farcical exercise.

The scripted plot started on the morning of August 9 soon after the body of the victim was recovered from the seminar hall within the R.G. Kar premises. As per the victim’s parents, on the same morning, they received subsequent calls from a woman claiming to be an Assistant Superintendent of the hospital making contradictory statements each time.

“First she said that my daughter had become seriously ill. Next, she claimed that my daughter had committed suicide,” claimed the victim’s father to the media persons after the tragedy.

An audio clip of the purported conversation also became viral in the social media then which authenticated the allegations of the victim’s parents.

Kolkata Police started the initial investigation and soon took the prime accused in the case and civic volunteer Sanjay Roy in custody. However, several lapses in the process of initial investigation by the city police started surfacing then. Some of them were lackadaisical in cordoning off the entire crime scene allowing several unwanted individuals crowding there and lapses in the post-mortem process that raised suspicions about the tampering with evidence in the matter.

Following these developments, the civil society flared up in anguish which was followed by a series of protests by people throughout the state. The protests were led by representatives from the medical fraternity in the state.

Slowly, the protest fever gripped other states in the country and subsequently similar protest demonstrations by non-resident Indians settled in different countries abroad also started surfacing.

The ongoing protest demonstrations took a dramatic turn at midnight of August 14 when almost the entire state was on the streets condemning the macabre tragedy as well as demanding the safety of women at the workplace.

A group of miscreants suddenly barged in within the R.G. Kar premises and ransacked portions of the emergency department of the hospital. Later information surfaced that their main target was the floor of the purported “scene of crime” that is the seminar hall where the body of the victim was recovered, clearly hinting that the attack was orchestrated to destroy the evidence. The development also diverted the media attention on that night from the protest or demonstration to the event of ransacking.

This development flared up public protests which were aggravated further by the decision of the junior doctors to go on fast-unto-death protest demanding justice for the victims.

In the meantime, there were two subsequent developments on the legal front. First, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took charge of the investigation from the city police following an order by a division bench of Calcutta High Court. Secondly, the Supreme Court headed by the then Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud took up the matter for hearing on a suo motu basis.

The initial days of the CBI probe in the matter were highly exciting with information about tampering of evidence during the phase of initial investigation by the city police surfacing one after another.

The excitement reached its peak when CBI arrested the former and controversial principal of R.G. Kar Sandip Ghosh and the former SHO of Tala Police Station Abhijit Mondal on charges of misleading the investigation and tampering with evidence.

All these were going on while the protests were gaining momentum with a group of junior doctors participating in the hunger strike started falling sick one after another. Even the West Bengal government, at that point in time, seemed a bit helpless in the midst of all-around pressure and made desperate attempts to sit at the discussion table with the junior doctors to end the impasse.

However, the series of heartbreaks started soon first with the first charge sheet of CBI identifying the civic volunteer Sanjay Roy as the “sole prime accused” in the crime of rape and murder.

At the same time following a meeting with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the junior doctors withdrew from the hunger strike which to a large extent dampened the general protest mood involving civil society and common people.

The final blow came on December 13, when a special court in Kolkata granted “default bail” to Ghosh and Mondal in the rape and murder as CBI failed to submit a supplementary charge sheet against the duo within 90 days from the date of their arrests.

Following this development, there was an air of frustration and suspicion about the sincerity with which the central investigating agency also was conducting the probe. Suspicions surfaced further following a report from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) that contradicted several points that surfaced during the course of the investigation.

The first contradiction was about the “scene of crime”. While both Kolkata Police and CBI conducted the investigation considering the seminar hall from where the body of the victim was discovered as the scene of the crime, the CFSL report clearly stated there was no evidence of scuffle at the seminar room thus creating doubts on whether that place was actually the scene of crime or not.

Secondly, the CFSL report, while not ruling out the possibility of murder and crime being conducted by one accused, advocated for further research based on different past scientific reports by experts in similar cases can lead to the final conclusion on whether more than one person was involved in the crime.

At the same time, the CFSL report clearly stated that the confidentiality factor of the post-mortem process of the body of the victim was compromised and standard protocols were not followed during that process.

The seventh point mentioned in the CSFL report is, “Observation of the videography of the PM examination revealed that several people were present inside the post-mortem hall and some of them were taking photographs and making videos on their personal mobile phones, which is against the standard and accepted protocol and practice to maintain confidentiality of the case and dignity of the deceased,” the report said.