The Supreme Court has refused to consider a petition for re-investigation of the rape-murder of a doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital that had shocked the nation last year. The petition, filed by the parents of the doctor, has been withdrawn by their lawyer.
Appearing on behalf of the investigative agency – the Central Bureau of Investigation, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that the petition of the parents will only help the man convicted – Sanjoy Roy, a volunteer with the Kolkata Police who had a free run of the hospital.
The parents of the doctor had sought re-investigation and additional investigation, contending that others besides Sanjay Roy were involved. The conspirators and instigators have not been arrested and neither were those who saved and sheltered him, they had contended.
The court, however, has allowed the parents to amend it and file a fresh petition.
On January 20, a Kolkata trial court awarded convict Sanjay Roy “life term imprisonment till death” in the case.
The body of the post-graduate trainee doctor was found in the hospital’s seminar room on August 9 last year, following which the Kolkata police arrested civic volunteer Roy the next day in connection with the crime.
The top court also said the protesting doctors who returned to work after 22.8.24 should be regularised and their action will not be considered as absence from duty.
The court, however, clarified that its direction has been issued in view of specific facts and circumstances and so this will not be considered as a precedent.
“We deem it appropriate to clarify that if protesting workers had joined work post the Supreme Court order then their absence shall be regularised and not be treated as absence from duty. This is issued in peculiar facts and circumstances of the cases and is not laying down any precedent,” said the bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar.
