Kolkata: A team of CBI officers reached the Presidency Jail here on Wednesday afternoon to interrogate Sanjay Roy, the sole accused arrested for the rape and murder of a junior doctor at the state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata last month.
Roy, a civic volunteer posted at the police outpost of the hospital, was arrested on the basis of CCTV footage and a bluetooth device found near the junior doctor’s body. He was reportedly seen entering the seminar hall where the victim’s body was found on the morning of August 9.
Roy was initially arrested by the Kolkata Police, but was handed over to the CBI after the Calcutta High Court directed the central agency to take over the investigation from the city police.
Sources said the investigating officers have got some fresh leads in the probe which prompted them to question Roy again. However, the CBI officers remain tight-lipped about the leads.
While the local media earlier reported that Roy has admitted to the crime, many people expressed apprehension that the rape and murder couldn’t have been the handiwork of a single person.
Sources said while the main focus of the probe is whether Roy was the only perpetrator of the ghastly crime, the CBI is also looking at suspected tampering of evidence as well as severe lapses on the part of the city police which conducted the initial probe before it was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The sources added that many lapses have been flagged in the initial investigation, including the amateurish language used in the post-mortem report, lackadaisical videography of the autopsy, contradictions over the garments worn by the victim in the post-mortem report, and the seizure list of the Kolkata Police.
The central agency is now trying to find out whether the lapses were sheer act of callousness, or were done deliberately to mislead the probe.
Last week, Governor C.V. Ananda Bose had also highlighted the ‘flaws’ on the part of Kolkata Police in handling the probe.
“Law enforcement aspect of the Kolkata Police – or the inexplicable lack of it – in the entire sequence of events that unfolded following the discovery of the body of the victim was severely reprimanded by the civil society and castigated by the courts,” a Raj Bhavan statement read.
On September 6, a special court in Kolkata extended Roy’s judicial custody by 14 days.