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'A murder has occurred in the room, but there were no signs of struggle.'
'RG Kar says the body was discovered at 9:30 am. But the media was informed at 8:30 am.'
'We realised that crucial evidence was being destroyed.'
'She had several bite marks on her neck, but no swab was collected.'
'My daughter had 28 injuries on her body. But there was no DNA of the assailant under her nails.'
'Are you saying she did not try to defend herself?'
On January 20, 2025, Additional Sessions Judge Anirban Das of the Sealdah court in Kolkata, while sentencing civic volunteer Sanjay Roy to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of the 31-year-old postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College last year, pulled up the Kolkata police, the authorities at the state government-run medical college hospital, including former principal Sandeep Ghosh, for trying to cover up the death of the victim as suicide to avoid liability.
"RG Kar principal Sandip Ghosh is as guilty as Sanjay Roy. If Roy should be hanged, so should the principal. The commissioner of police and the assistant commissioner of police are fully involved with tampering of evidence. They know who killed my daughter and how they killed her," say the girl's parents.
Calm, composed and cognisant of all the aspects of the case, in an interview with Swarupa Dutt/Rediff.com the parents talk about what happened on August 9, 2024, from the time they received the phone call that their daughter was unwell to her cremation.
The second of a three-part interview.
The reputation of the Kolkata police has been at its lowest since the rape and murder of your daughter. Had the case not been transferred to the CBI would you have got justice?
No, never. But it's not as though we are getting justice from the CBI.
On August 9, we got a call from RG Kar Hospital at 10:53 am, saying, 'Come soon'.
At 12:53 pm we reached the hospital but were kept waiting for three-and-a-half hours outside the seminar room to see my daughter's body.
We were told a probe was going on.
We saw the CP [Commissioner of Police Vineet Goyal who was removed a month after the incident] and the ACP there and we thought that an investigation was really going on. But actually, they used that time to destroy evidence.
The CP and ACP are fully involved with tampering of evidence. They know who killed my daughter and how they killed her.
The police is supposed to uphold the law, keep us safe, they are our bhorsha (faith), asha (hope). The CM represents a political party, and that's an entirely different matter.
More significant than the fact that my daughter was raped is that she was murdered. We never imagined that the presence of the CP, ACP at the crime scene would work against getting justice for my daughter.
Tell us about the first call at 10:53 in the morning, August 9.
The first call said that she was unwell. When I called back they said she was being taken to the emergency room.
But my daughter was given no treatment.
When a dead body is found on the road, it is brought to the hospital and then after a check-up by doctors, declared dead. But in my daughter's case nothing of the sort was done.
So, you were not informed that she had died.
I called RG Kar Hospital two more times and on the third call, the chest medicine department assistant supervisor told us that my daughter had committed suicide. Strangely, the police never questioned him.
In all these months, my daughter's head of department, my daughter's immediate boss, the vice principal, nobody, not a single person contacted us or visited us.
We admitted our daughter to RG Kar on the basis of its faculty, its principal.
In any workplace or school or college, the boss or principal is directly responsible for the safety of its staff or students. It is supposed to be a safe haven. I'm baffled that my daughter was murdered in a place that is supposed to be safe and secure.
How did you reach the hospital on August 9? It's far away from your home.
My daughter had a car and driver. She had bought the car just six months ago and told me, 'Dad, I will buy it from my stipend.' But I said no, I will pay for it. It's a blue Baleno. She always wanted to buy a Maruti car.
So, what happened when you reached the hospital?
The media had already reached the spot but they were not allowed up to the seminar room which is on the third floor.
And that's where we made a mistake.
We should have taken the media with us. We wouldn't have been in this position today had we done that.
Did your daughter ever mention spending a night at the seminar room?
No, never. Why was she in the seminar room? That remains unanswered. When they were on night duty, they stayed in a separate room.
[Newspaper reports have said that she headed to the seminar room when a patient had been admitted for a sleep study. PG students often used the hospital's sleep lab or the sleep-study room as a rest room as it's air-conditioned. That night, since a patient had been admitted for sleep study, the victim headed to the seminar room. The sleep lab, the seminar room and the interns' room are close by on the third floor].
We spoke to that patient's relatives and they said the patient had left the sleep-study room at 12:30 am and the rest of the doctors on duty used that room to rest that night. But my daughter was found in the seminar room. Everybody was safe except my daughter.
In all these years she never told us that she used the seminar room to study. She used it only on that night? Impossible!
Sealdah court Judge Anirban Das has said the convict had attacked your daughter while she was asleep in the seminar room on August 9.
The crime was not committed when my daughter was asleep. Right from the time she was in Class 9, when academics gained primacy, my daughter would sleep at around 4 am.
When on duty at RG Kar, she used to tell me, 'Mom, I didn't sleep a wink at night. There were so many patients.' She was the senior-most doctor in the department and patients told us later that they used to tell her to go and sleep since she was on her feet the whole night.
So if are you trying to say she was asleep for hours and the crime happened when she was asleep, we do not believe it. The only time she slept on duty in two years was that night? And she slept so deeply that she never fought back?
What did you see in the seminar room?
The CFSL (Central Forensic Science Laboratory) report says that the crime did not occur in the seminar room. And that's exactly what we thought when we saw her body there.
There were items in the room that we believe were arranged or planted. We came to this conclusion the moment we saw her body there, much before the CFSL report.
We saw that her laptop, mobile phone and shoes were neatly arranged by her body.
A murder has occurred in the room, but there were no signs of struggle. Nothing was in disarray. A few pages of her diary had been torn.
We could see her face; the rest of her body was covered in a blanket. Her arms were folded above her head.
The location of the seminar hall is not secluded. There is always lots of people, noise, chaos; it's always busy. And something like this happens inside the seminar room and nobody comes to know of this?
So what do you believe happened?
We were told that she was seen lying inside the seminar room at 2:50 am covered with a blanket.
August in Kolkata is hot and humid. Why would she use a blanket? My daughter was already dead by then. She was killed elsewhere and brought to the seminar room; that's what we believe.
RG Kar says the body was discovered at 9:30 am. But the media was informed at 8:30 am. So, even the time of the discovery of her body is false. The CBI has not even considered this.
What happened next, that morning?
We could see her body only after speaking to the CM. Then the CP called us to the seminar room but even after that we had to wait outside as the door was shut.
Actually, we didn't even have the energy to speak to the CM, but after all, she's the CM, so we had to talk to her.
That night, we went to Tala thana to file an FIR that we wanted a second post-mortem, but not at RG Kar because it was where she was murdered.
We also did not want her to be cremated till all investigations were over. We wanted her body preserved.
We waited in vain.
The TMC took my daughter's body via a green corridor to our house, while we sat and waited at Tala thana. The police blocked our car, we were not allowed to get off or file an FIR.
We were threatened, the police surrounded our car and we were forced to leave for home.
Her body was brought home by a local TMC councillor and the police. We were not even allowed to accompany her body in the hearse.
Why did you not want her to be cremated? Why did you want a second post-mortem?
We knew the moment we saw her there was something wrong. Dr Sumit Roy Tapadar, my daughter's boss, and her head of department, Dr Arunabha Dutta Chaudhuri, both said my daughter had died by suicide.
They said 'suicide' even after seeing the condition of my daughter's body.
Dr Tapadar checked her pupil for signs of life with his mobile phone torch and then put a blanket on her. This is evidence tampering.
Would you allow a body to be touched? Would you not cordon it off?
Right till 3 pm there was no cordon and so many people disturbed the crime scene. It is common sense, that something wrong was happening.
We saw all this and realised that crucial evidence was being destroyed. She had several bite marks on her neck, but no swab was collected from there.
My daughter had 28 injuries on her body. But there was no DNA of the assailant under her nails.
Are you saying she did not try to defend herself? If she had so many scratches on her body, did she not scratch her assailant? Yet, her nails were clean. So they destroyed the evidence.
What happened at the cremation?
We were just present, we couldn't perform any ceremony. We were not allowed to even pay for our daughter's last rites.
My daughter must have thought, 'Bapi didn't even pay for my funeral.'
We did not have to sign any papers that is normally required during a funeral. They did not allow us to approach the body except for doing the mukhagni. I [the mother] did her mukhagni. There was police everywhere.
As my daughter's body was being placed inside the electric crematorium, the local MLA thumped the local councillor's back, telling him, 'Well done, boy, well done, boy.'
When my daughter's body was lying upstairs in this house prior to her cremation for people to pay their respects, the DCP (North) called me to another room and offered me a packet.
It was cash.
I refused to take it and told him that I can see that you have worked hard for the IPS pinned on your lapel, but my daughter has worked harder than you and you are insulting her by offering me money.
When the CM came to meet us at home she said I will ensure compensation for your daughter's death. We refused the compensation and said we want justice.
She said the culprit has been caught. We told her to her face that there are others involved, catch them.
Vineet Goyal was standing next to her. She looked up at him and said 'Bhetor theke karuke niye eshe tumi danda dao (find someone from inside, use force).'
How was it meeting the CM? Were you apprehensive, scared?
We have lost our daughter, there is nothing to fear anymore. The person for whom we worked so hard... it all ended with that one phone call.
The CM told the media that since our daughter is dead, the government can easily give a compensation of Rs 10 lakh.
I want to say that my daughter's MD seat was valued at Rs 30 lakh had she vacated it.
The next day we said we will give the CM Rs 20 lakh, all the jewellery we collected for our daughter's wedding, but give our daughter back.