Kolkata: The West Bengal authorities moved the Calcutta excessive courtroom on Tuesday in search of capital punishment for Sanjay Roy, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial courtroom in Kolkata on Monday within the August 2024 rape and homicide of a post-graduate trainee physician on the metropolis’s RG Kar Medical Faculty and Hospital.
The Calcutta excessive courtroom. (File Picture)
“Advocate general Kishore Dutta brought up the matter before the division bench of justice Debangshu Basak and said the state wanted to file an appeal seeking capital punishment. Justice Basak permitted the state to challenge the order the Sealdah court passed on Monday,” a state authorities lawyer stated requesting anonymity.
Roy, 34, a civic volunteer who labored for Kolkata police in the course of the crime, was sentenced to jail for remainder of life beneath sections 66 (rape), 64 (inflicting harm leading to demise) and 103 (1) (homicide) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) by Anirban Das, the extra district and classes decide of the Sealdah courtroom.
Minutes after the decision, chief minister Mamata Banerjee stated the punishment had disillusioned her.
“I cannot comment on the court but I am not satisfied. The state government prayed for death sentence from the very beginning. We were all expecting death sentence,” Banerjee stated. Later, on Monday night, she wrote in a social media publish that her authorities would transfer the excessive courtroom in search of demise sentence.
Banerjee was touring Malda district on Tuesday when the state moved the division bench.
Addressing a authorities occasion in Malda, the chief minister reiterated that the trial courtroom’s refusal to deal with the crime as “rarest of the rare” – a time period the Central Bureau of Investigation used throughout trial to hunt capital punishment – had shocked her.
“This is a rare, sensitive and very very heinous crime,” Banerjee stated.
She additionally referred to the West Bengal legislative meeting passing the Aparajita Girl and Baby (West Bengal Felony Legal guidelines Modification) Invoice, 2024, in September final yr. The invoice seeks adjustments in a number of sections of the BNS in order that 10 or 20-year jail phrases in rape, gangrape and homicide circumstances are changed with demise penalty or imprisonment for remaining lifetime of the convict.
Bengal governor C V Ananda Bose referred the Invoice to President Droupadi Murmu 4 days after it was handed.
“Our Bill has provision for death sentence. They (Centre) have not cleared it till now. We want it to become a model before the nation,” Banerjee stated in Malda.
Roy was arrested on August 10, a day after the crime, by Kolkata police and handed over to CBI following an order the Calcutta excessive courtroom handed on August 13. The Chief Justice of India’s bench took over the listening to on September 20 by way of a suo motu petition amid nationwide protests. Roy pleaded innocence throughout trial and claimed to have been famed by Kolkata police.
The state’s resolution to problem the Sealdah courtroom’s order triggered reactions in political circles and the 31-year-old sufferer’s household.
The sufferer’s father, who accused the CBI on Monday of not conducting a radical investigation, stated: “What did she (the chief minister) do when Kolkata’s former police commissioner allowed evidence to be tampered with? Didn’t she know that it would affect the verdict?”
On September 17 final yr, the then Kolkata police commissioner Vineet Goyal was changed by the chief minister after she met protesting junior docs who sought his elimination.
The medical fraternity and residents who took to the streets in hundreds over the previous 5 months alleged that Roy was not the only real perpetrator. The sufferer’s dad and mom repeatedly alleged that their 31-year-old daughter was the sufferer of a bigger conspiracy hatched by influential individuals.
The ruling Trinamool Congress has been focused by opposition events since CBI has not but framed fees in opposition to Dr Sandip Ghosh, the previous principal of RG Kar Medical Faculty, and Abhijit Mondal, the native Tala police station’s former officer-in-charge.
Each have been arrested by CBI on September 14 and charged with tampering of proof. Ghosh can be going through investigation in a separate case regarding monetary corruption on the hospital. Each have been granted bail on December 13 as CBI didn’t file chargesheet within the stipulated 90 days.
Samik Bhattacharya, chief spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Celebration’s Bengal unit, stated: “The RG Kar Hospital incident was an institutional crime. Mamata Banerjee is trying to give it a political colour. The state won’t have a cakewalk at the high court. The appeal will have a boomerang effect. Just wait and watch.”