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The Calcutta high court on Tuesday ordered the transfer of probe into the alleged rape and murder of a trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital from the Kolkata Police to the CBI.
A widespread agitation by junior doctors has crippled state healthcare services for the fifth day, with the functioning of even emergency and outdoor departments coming to a halt in most state-run hospitals.
The high court directed the city police to hand over the case diary to the central probe agency by this evening, and all other documents by 10 am on Wednesday.
The direction was passed in the wake of a petition moved by the victim's parents praying for a court-monitored probe and multiple other PILs seeking probe transfer to the CBI.
The interim order came five days after the gruesome incident had come to light and five days ahead of the probe deadline of Sunday issued to the police by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, beyond which she had vowed to hand over investigations to the central agency.
The body of the postgraduate trainee with severe injury marks all over was found inside the seminar hall of the state-run hospital's chest department on Friday morning. The preliminary autopsy report suggested she was subjected to violent sexual assault.
Despite the Kolkata Police arresting one of its own, a civic volunteer named Sanjay Roy, in this connection on Saturday, the move failed to silence the clamour of allegations of a botched up investigation and evidence tampering which have now snowballed into an outrage of junior doctors spreading across medical campuses of the state and beyond.
The state's joint platform of doctors have called for strike at Out Patient Departments in all government and private hospitals of the state on Wednesday to protest the RG Kar Hospital incident.
On Tuesday, a Calcutta high court division bench presided by Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam also urged agitating doctors in the state to call off their cease-work, maintaining that there is a "pious obligation" on their part to treat patients who come to government hospitals.
Junior doctors and interns across West Bengal continued their cease work on Tuesday, protesting against the incident and demanding adequate security for hospital staff.
The probe transfer order was passed following the court's observation that no significant progress in investigations was made by the police in the past five days, a conclusion that the bench reached after going through the case diary it had summoned to court and hearing arguments of all parties involved.
The bench further observed it was disheartening to note that the role of the RG Kar Medical College principal, Sandip Ghosh, was not proactive where he or the hospital superintendent took no initiative to file a murder complaint for the gruesome death which happened inside the campus and not on the streets outside.
The state had earlier submitted that the police registered an unnatural death case instead of rape and murder since there were no immediate complaints.
Following the rebuke, the court asked Ghosh to go on a long leave.
The court also expressed surprise that he was reinstated as principal of another medical college in the city barely hours after he tendered his resignations from both his teaching and administrative positions on Monday.
Ghosh was later learnt to have applied for a 15-day leave from work less than 24 hours after he was appointed principal at the Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital (CNMCH).
The court forbade Ghosh to join work till it passed further orders and posted the next date of hearing after three weeks. It has also sought a progress report on the case from the state government.
Meanwhile, the agitating doctors at CNMCH who had put up a lock on the entry gate of the administrative building to prevent Ghosh's entry to his office said that they would not only resist this appointment but also demanded that he be kept out of all administrative positions for the remaining period of his service tenure.
Hailing the Calcutta High Court order transferring the probe to CBI, senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari demanded the resignation of West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee for her alleged failure to ensure the safety and security of women doctors at state-run hospitals.
Asking people to hit the streets and demand the resignation of Banerjee, who also holds the health and home portfolios, Adhikari, the leader of opposition in the assembly, said BJP MLAs would launch a sit-in in Kolkata on August 14 to press for their demand.
Earlier, an appeal from state Health Secretary N S Nigam urging the protesting doctors to resume work and restore normalcy in hospitals seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.
Nigam reiterated the state's commitment to a transparent investigation and strict punishment for the culprits and emphasised that the government "upholds the dignity of the medical professionals".
Protest rallies from various groups hit the streets of Kolkata for the third consecutive day including one at Shyambazar in north Kolkata by a forum of intellectuals where filmmaker Aparna Sen also joined.