KOLKATA: A Kolkata Police civic volunteer, Sanjay Roy, was taken into custody on Saturday in connection with the brutal rape and murder of a second-year postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Hospital. The arrest came just six hours after the police force had formed a seven-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the case.
On Sunday, investigators discovered the most compelling evidence against Sanjay Roy, the prime suspect in the rape and murder of the 31-year-old doctor.Traces of blood and skin found under the victim’s fingernails perfectly matched Roy’s DNA and corresponded to the injuries he sustained during the attack, said a senior cop.
According to a senior police officer, the victim, despite being half-asleep, had put up a desperate fight against her attacker, and it was this struggle that provided investigators with the crucial evidence they needed to link Roy to the crime.
What is the sequence of events?
- 9.30 am: The assistant superintendent calls the victim’s parents and reports the incident as a suicide.
- 10.10 am: The inspector-in-charge of the R.G. Kar police outpost is alerted.
- 10.30 am: Tala police station sends an alert to CP, DCP, JCP, and addl CP.
- 11.30 am: Police officers up to the rank of additional CP arrive at the scene.
- 1.00 pm: The victim’s parents arrive, and a forensic team examines the seminar room, the crime scene. The parents claim they are initially denied access.
- 1.10 pm: The parents are granted access to the seminar room. Students identify the body, and a cloth partition is put up.
- 3.55 pm: The victim’s father requests an inquest by a judicial magistrate.
- 4.20 pm: The judicial magistrate arrives, conducts a videographed inquest, and the woman’s mother signs the inquest report.
- 5.30 pm: The body is taken out for postmortem.
- 6.10 pm to 7.10 pm: The postmortem is completed.
What does the postmortem report say?
- The report said the death was due to smothering and throttling.
- Prima facie, death has been due to gagging and there were multiple signs of injuries and struggle on the body.
- The mouth and throat were constantly pressed to prevent screaming. The throat was strangled to suffocate. The thyroid cartilage broke due to this strangulation.
- There were blood stains on the face, eyes and face, scratch marks on various parts of the body and bleeding from the private parts.
- There were injuries on the lips, abdomen, right hand and fingers while a collar bone was broken.
- There are aberration marks and bruise marks on the victim’s face, on the eyes till the neck.
- The scratch marks on the woman’s face, likely caused by the accused’s fingernails, suggest that she desperately tried to fight back.
- The report mentions that the accused “got certain advantage as the victim was in deep sleep at the time of the attack.”
- She had tried to resist, and there were deep mark injuries and scratches on the hands of the accused as well.
- The report, however, said that there have been no fracture or breakage of the collar bone or pelvis as reported earlier in the initial phase of observation.
What are preliminary forensic findings?
- The scratch mark injuries on Sanjay’s body matched with the skin and blood samples collected from the nails of the victim.
The murder has triggered widespread outrage with doctors and nurses protesting in Kolkata and other parts of India. Outpatient services and routine surgeries were severely disrupted in government hospitals nationwide on Monday as resident doctors protested the rape and murder of a colleague at Kolkata’s R G Kar Medical College and Hospital. The demonstrations were most prominent in Delhi and Kolkata, which became the focal points of the protest.
The protesting doctors are calling for a CBI investigation into the incident and the urgent implementation of a central law to safeguard healthcare workers from violence.
Sandip Ghosh, the principal of RG Kar Medical College, has resigned from his post in the wake of the incident. Within four hours, he was appointed as the principal of Calcutta National Medical College (CNMC).
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has warned the Kolkata police that the investigation will be transferred to the CBI if they are unable to solve the case by Sunday.
