The arrest of Dr Sandip Ghosh, nearly a month after the rape-murder of a young doctor at the medical college he headed convulsed West Bengal and rattled its pugnacious Chief Minister, is being regarded with cautious optimism. And that reflects the reality of the state today—no one familiar with the way things work in Bengal really believes that culprits of major crimes would ever be punished, given the collusion at all levels. But will Ghosh be the exception?
The state government and its apologists had been crowing that even the CBI sleuths concurred with the Kolkata Police’s assertion that Sandip Roy, the ‘civic volunteer’ is the only alleged rapist-murderer and there were no others involved in the gruesome act. But that does not mean he was the only person who plotted and executed the crime; nor does it prove that the rape-murder was not connected to other nefarious goings on at RG Kar Medical College.
However, the state police had predictably turned a deaf ear to this aspect and tried to focus public attention and ire instead on the alleged perpetrator and his equally alleged preference for all kinds of perverted sexual acts. The city police steered clear of widening the probe (and the narrative) to include any other possibly illegal acts by college authorities, including the then principal, whose charmed life in that post underlined that he was a ruling party crony.
That is why Ghosh’s arrest is so critical as it reiterates what people have long suspected about many (if not most) institutions in the state: widespread corruption with deep links to the party and state machinery. The doctor colleagues of the rape-murder victim had been protesting about criminal activities in that medical college from the very day the girl’s body was found in the seminar hall and word got around that the authorities were trying to pass it off as suicide.
The arrest also allayed the fear among many that the now-infamous doctor would be first taken into custody by the far more amenable Kolkata Police, thereby keeping him away from the CBI and any potentially damaging revelations. Only the relentless gaze of both the Supreme Court and the Calcutta High Court on the probe probably deterred the Kolkata Police from pre-emptively taking custody of Ghosh, ostensibly in furtherance of their own “investigations”.
At least some people have not forgotten that earlier the Kolkata Police had gone so far as to even detain CBI officials—as happened in 2019, when the central team wanted to question the then Kolkata Police Commissioner (and now state director general of police) Rajeev Kumar on the Saradha and Rose Valley scams. The CBI team was hauled off to a police station and subjected to two hours of questioning. And they finally got to talk to Kumar by court decree!
Intriguingly, the issue then was rather similar to the suspicion now doing the rounds about the RG Kar case too: destruction of evidence. The interim CBI chief at that time had averred that Kumar had been “instrumental” in the state police taking charge of all the evidence but not handing them over, even making some of them “disappear”. At that time, the CM had combatively stated she could have had the CBI team arrested but had refrained from doing so!
Given the fractious recent history between the CBI and Kolkata Police, the public’s apprehension that the latter would do something to thwart the central agency yet again was not unfounded. That the CBI needed really solid evidence of malfeasance before arresting Ghosh did not cut much ice with the sceptical Bengal public, long used to frustrating delays in the earlier central probes into criminal activities in the state, especially involving politicians.
There is a definite feeling that the CBI and other central agencies tend to start off vigorously but then eventually end up with little to show at the end of it all. Not that the public blames them entirely for it. Destruction of evidence has become such a common feature of so many high-profile crimes in the state that people think that is the norm. In the RG Kar case, many even believe Roy was persuaded to do the deed in the belief that he would never be convicted.
The start-stop-start sort of role of courts regarding central investigations in West Bengal has also heightened public doubt about the probability of the guilty ever being arrested, much less tried, convicted and sentenced. At various times over the past few years, central agencies like the CBI and ED have been delayed temporarily from proceeding in their probes due to stays granted—and then vacated—by various High Court and Supreme Court benches.
The CM and her ruling party cohort have earned a formidable reputation in the minds of the people for being able to ‘manage’ matters to their own benefit. No matter how purposeful the central government and its agencies may be, there is a feeling that the regime in West Bengal will be able to save its own from serious damage. Earlier crimes with political angles have been ‘handled’ and there was every reason to despair that this one would be no different.
But there is one major difference this time: the amazing resilience being shown by the young doctors of RG Kar Medical College and across Bengal. They have not only kept up their quest to get justice for their murdered colleague but also forced the normally reluctant general public—students, lawyers, actors and other ‘civil society’ groups—to come out and voice their anger and frustration at the rampant corruption, criminality and nepotism in West Bengal.
And this popular courage to speak up—and not pipe down due to pressure—has been given a fillip by Sandip Ghosh’s arrest. And the CM and ruling party’s alarm has given rise to hope that nefarious activities in government entities will finally be stopped, the politico-criminal nexus (exemplified by party-affiliated goons like the alleged rapist-murder Sanjay Roy) will be dismantled, and the feeling of fear will now shift to the those who had perpetuated it so far.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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