A day after the Supreme Court ordered the deployment of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) at R G Kar Medical College Hospital, a team of the central paramilitary force on Wednesday visited the premier state-run teaching hospital and took stock of security arrangements.
The CISF team led by K Pratap Singh, DIG, reached the hospital this morning around 9.30 am and talked to the local police personnel and hospital authorities before taking over charge of supervising security affairs.
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Mr Singh has reportedly spoken to the city commissioner of police Vineet Goyal to discuss deployment of central forces at R G Kar Medical College. It’s learnt that the force will take over the charge of security arrangements from Thursday.
The CISF officials also enquired about the total number of entry and exit points, gates, departments etc at the hospital, it’s learnt.
Prof (Dr) Suhrita Paul, newly-appointed principal, who replaced her former counterpart Prof (Dr) Sandip Ghosh, was not there in the teaching hospital when the CISF officers held talks with the authorities.
Prof Paul has not been coming to the hospital regularly but looking after daily academic activities allegedly sitting at Swasthya Bhaban, state health department headquarters at Salt Lake.
With deployment of CISF, R G Kar Medical College Hospital is probably the first ever state-run hospital where central paramilitary force will supervise security arrangements.
The body of a postgraduate trainee doctor, who was raped and murdered, was found in the seminar room of the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on 9 August, triggering nationwide outrage.
A civic volunteer of Kolkata Police (KP) Sanjay Roy was arrested in connection with the case the next day.
With the directive of the Calcutta High Court (HC), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the case from KP that was probing the case initially and started investigation since last week.
The central investigating agency has already interrogated Prof Ghosh for more than 70 hours in different phases during the past six days.
A mob entered R G Kar Medical College Hospital and vandalised the emergency department, nursing station, and medicine store, while also damaging CCTV cameras in the early hours of 15 August.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered deployment of CISF at the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital to enable doctors to resume work.
“In the aftermath of the brutal incident and the demonstrations which followed, the state government was expected to ensure the deployment of the state machinery to prevent a breach of law and order. It was all the more necessary to do so since investigation of the crime which took place in the precincts of the hospital was underway. We are unable to comprehend how the state was not prepared to deal with the incident of vandalisation of the premises of the hospital,” the apex court had observed on Tuesday.