A volunteer working alongside Kolkata police was arrested on Saturday for the rape and murder of a second-year postgraduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Hospital. The arrest of 35-year-old Sanjay Roy occurred within six hours of a special investigation team (SIT) being established to address the heinous crime. Roy was produced in a local court, where no lawyer agreed to represent him. The court subsequently placed him in 14 days of police custody after the public prosecutor compared the assault to the 2012 Nirbhaya case. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee vowed that “if needed, the accused will be hanged.”
Details of the Crime
Roy, a civic volunteer, had been recruited in 2019 and was often posted at RG Kar Hospital’s police outpost. Although not officially part of the police force, his role involved assisting in non-law enforcement tasks. On multiple occasions, he had access to every department within the hospital. The breakthrough in the investigation came from a torn earphone found in the seminar room on the third floor of the emergency building, where the body of the 31-year-old doctor was discovered early Friday.
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CCTV footage revealed Roy entering the emergency building at 4 a.m. with a Bluetooth device in his ears. He exited the building 40 minutes later without the earphone, which later paired with his cellphone. The postmortem report confirmed sexual assault and revealed multiple injuries and signs of struggle, including bloodstains, scratch marks, wounds in the private areas, and a broken collarbone.
Investigation and Arrest
Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal stated, “We arrested the accused due to his strong complicity in the case based on items collected from the spot and CCTV footage.” Investigations uncovered that the doctor had been asleep when Roy attacked her. Earlier in the evening, she and two juniors had ordered food and dined together in the seminar room while watching Neeraj Chopra win silver at the Olympics. After dinner, the others left, and she chose to study and rest. She was last seen asleep in the seminar room until at least 3 a.m.
Roy first entered the hospital premises around 11 p.m. and was reportedly intoxicated. After leaving, he consumed more alcohol before re-entering the emergency building around 4 a.m. Although five others had accessed the area, only Roy could not account for his presence. He later confessed to the crime, admitting to strangling the doctor after she resisted.
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