West Bengal government seeks death penalty for RG Kar rape and murder convict

Sanjay Roy was held guilty under Sections 66 (rape), 64 (causing injury resulting in death) and 103 (1) (murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

Kolkata: The West Bengal government on Tuesday moved the Calcutta high court seeking the death penalty for Sanjay Roy, the sole convict in the August 2024 rape and murder of a trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, a day after he was given life in prison by a local court.

Accused of RG Kar rape and murder convict Sanjay Roy at the Sealdah Court in Kolkata.(ANI)

Roy, 34, a civic volunteer who worked for Kolkata Police at the time of the crime, was held guilty under Sections 66 (rape), 64 (causing injury resulting in death) and 103 (1) (murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) by additional district and sessions judge of the Sealdah court, Anirban Das. But the judge ruled against the death penalty, ruling the case did not fall under the “rarest of rare” category — a decision that was criticised by both the victim’s family and the state government led by chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

“The state’s advocate general Kishore Dutta brought up the matter before the high court division bench of justice Debangshu Basak and said the state wanted to file an appeal seeking capital punishment. Justice Basak permitted the state to challenge the order the Sealdah court passed on Monday,” a state government lawyer said on Tuesday, asking not to be named.

On Monday, minutes after the verdict, the chief minister said that the punishment had disappointed her.

“I cannot comment on the court but I am not satisfied. The state government prayed for death sentence from the very beginning. We were all expecting death sentence,” Banerjee said at the time, and later she wrote in a social media post that the government would move the high court.

Banerjee was touring Malda on Tuesday when the state moved the division bench. Addressing an event there, she reiterated that the trial court’s refusal to treat the crime as “rarest of the rare” had shocked her.

“This is a rare, sensitive and very, very heinous crime,” she said.

The body of the 31-year-old second-year postgraduate student, who was raped and murdered inside a seminar hall of the hospital, was found on August 9. The crime took place at the third-floor seminar hall of the chest department late at night, and police later said that multiple lacerations and wounds were found on her body. Roy was arrested the next day.

The Supreme Court propounded the “rarest of rare” doctrine during the Bachan Singh case in 1980 for death penalty. There is no statutory definition of “rarest of rare” and it depends upon facts and circumstances of a particular case ranging from the brutality of the crime and the conduct of the offender to their criminal record and chances of reformation.

In Malda, Benerjee also referred to the West Bengal legislative assembly passing the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, 2024 in September last year. The bill seeks changes in several sections of BNS so that 10- or 20-year jail terms in rape, gang rape and murder cases are replaced with death penalty or imprisonment for the rest of the convict’s life.

Bengal governor CV Ananda Bose referred the bill to President Droupadi Murmu days after it was passed.

“Our bill has provision for death sentence. They (Centre) have not cleared it till now. We want it to become a model before the nation,” Banerjee said.

But the 31-year-old victim’s father, who accused the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday of not conducting a thorough investigation, remained aggrieved despite the CM’s assurances and the government’s move to challenge the Sealdah court verdict.

“What did she (the chief minister) do when Kolkata’s former police commissioner allowed evidence to be tampered with? Didn’t she know that it would affect the verdict?” he asked.

To be sure, the crime which sent shock waves across the country, has not shown the ruling Trinamool Congress government in good light over the initial investigation and the administration’s early attempts to cover up the case, and ostensibly even pass it off as suicide.

The incident upended Bengali civil society, threw Kolkata into ferment and shook the state government. Since that day, tens of thousands of ordinary people flooded the streets repeatedly, demanding justice for the victim, and junior doctors struck work for close to six weeks, prompting the government to remove the Kolkata police commissioner and several senior health department officials.

Eventually, on September 17 last year, the then Kolkata police commissioner Vineet Goyal was replaced by Benerjee after protesting junior met her and demanded his removal .

The investigation was handed over to CBI on August 13. According to the CBI probe, Roy entered the hospital around 4am in an inebriated condition and left after about 40 minutes. The autopsy report of the doctor revealed that she was strangled and smothered to death; as well as injuries suggesting she was sexually assaulted. The federal agency conducted a polygraph test on Roy and collected 11 pieces of evidence, including CCTV footage, DNA samples, blood stains, and hair strands, to charge the convict, maintaining that he was the only one who committed the crime. The in-camera trial lasted for more than two months.

Dr Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of RG Kar Medical College, and Abhijit Mondal, the local Tala police station’s former officer-in-charge are both in the dock for tampering with evidence. Ghosh is also facing investigation in a separate case relating to financial corruption at the hospital.

They were both arrested in September last year and were granted bail in December.

The Sealdah court’s verdict, too, slammed the police and the hospital.

“It is not understandable to me why the police personnel of Tala PS (police station) kept everything behind a curtain and why such type of illegal acts was done by the concerned officer. The officers of Tala PS showed a very indifferent attitude from the very inception..,There is no doubt to consider that from the end of any authority, efforts were made to show the death as a suicidal one so that the hospital authority would not face any consequences...” the court said.

Samik Bhattacharya, chief spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Bengal unit, said: “The RG Kar Hospital incident was an institutional crime. Mamata Banerjee is trying to give it a political colour. The state won’t have a cakewalk at the high court. The appeal will have a boomerang effect. Just wait and watch.”