The Calcutta High Court on Thursday ordered the formation of a three-member Special Investigation Team of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) headed by Joint Director (Eastern Zone) in the 2024 RG Kar Hospital rape and murder case, and sought its report during the next hearing on June 25, lawyers who attended the hearing said.
“A bench of Justices Champa Sarkar and Tirthankar Ghosh passed the order after hearing the petition filed by the parents of the junior doctor who died in 2025, alleging a larger conspiracy and coordinated efforts to conceal evidence in and around the crime scene,” said one of the lawyers present in the court.
This development comes days after a bench of Justices Rajasekhar Mantha and Rai Chattopadhyay withdrew from hearing the plea of the victim’s parents on May 12, a month after the CBI directed it to start a fresh investigation.
On May 15, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari suspended former Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal and two other IPS officers on charges of mishandling police investigations and offering money to the victim’s parents. Adhikari also ordered an investigation against them.
On Thursday, the court ordered the CBI to examine the sequence of events: from the time the victim had dinner with some junior doctors on the night of August 9, 2024, as claimed by her parents, to the discovery of her body hours later in the third-floor seminar hall of the hospital’s emergency building, and finally the cremation of the body.
“The victim’s parents claimed that those who had dinner with their daughter were neither questioned by the Kolkata Police nor the CBI which took over the investigation following the Calcutta High Court’s August 13, 2024 order,” the lawyer added.
The court also directed the CBI to submit a report on the investigations conducted after the charge sheet issued on October 7, 2024, which led to the prison sentence of former Kolkata Police civilian volunteer, Sanjay Roy, whom the CBI described as the sole culprit of the crime.
In an oral response to these directions, the CBI’s lawyers told the bench that around 80 people were questioned during this period.
RJ Kar’s crime was one of the major issues in the recent Bengal Assembly elections, which the BJP swept. The BJP promised to form an inquiry committee if it came to power, fielding Ratna Debnath, the victim’s mother, from Panihati seat in North 24 Parganas district, which she won.
Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah campaigned for Debnath, who after the crime alleged that senior Trinamool Congress leaders and government officials hatched a conspiracy to kill her daughter to hide something.
