A day after the arrest of Dr Ashish Pandey, a house staff of R G Kar Medical College Hospital and TMCP leader on Thursday evening, Trinamul Congress leader Kunal Ghosh on Friday demanded arrests of five junior medics, who signed a note on the post-mortem of 31-year-old woman postgraduate trainee doctor on 9 August.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), probing both the gruesome incident at the teaching hospital and alleged financial irregularities involving crores of rupees in the hospital, arrested Dr Pandey on charge of his involvement in the scam.
He, some junior doctors alleged, was a leader of the Trinamul Congress Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) unit at the hospital and a close aide of Sandip Ghosh, the hospital’s former principal, who has been arrested in both the cases by the CBI. This afternoon, he was produced before the court at Sealdah.
The central investigating agency brought some serious allegations against him during a hearing today in the court. Under the patronage of Sandip Ghosh, Dr Pandey used to unleash ‘threat culture’ and extortion racket in the R G kar Medical College Hospital, according to the CBI.
He was not even eligible to be a house staff, the CBI argued in the court.
The court remanded him to CBI custody for three days.
“I am saying again, the CBI should immediately arrest those junior doctors, who had signed on the post-mortem and the destruction of a portion of the wall (near the seminar hall where the victim was found). The CBI should interrogate why they were engaged in trying to divert the investigation, to protect whose interests? Their names and photographs should be displayed,” Mr Ghosh wrote in Bengali on his X-handle around 11.30 am.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Ghosh had posted in English: “Those Junior Doctors, who signed in the PM and construction related papers; later kept silent; then took part in protest; they should be arrested and face custodial interrogation. Why this double standard game? Who is behind their stance change? The CBI should arrest them.”
Five of the doctors, who had signed the documents, are now members of a newly formed committee at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, where the newly-appointed principal heads the advisory board.