Sucharita Sarkar, the hospital’s non-medical assistant superintendent, made the first call at 10.53am, more than an hour after Sumit Roy Tapadar, assistant professor of respiratory medicine, alerted police about a 31-year-old intern being found dead on campus.
Based on the calls, the victim’s parents have alleged a cover-up.
Calls to parents made long after Kolkata hospital told cops about death
Each time, a woman provided conflicting information about my daughter’s condition,” the doctor’s father said. “It was only during the third call that the caller identified herself as an assistant superintendent of the hospital.”
The fact that the calls were made long after the hospital told police about the death have added to the family’s distress. A police team was at RG Kar hospital by 10.10am. The junior doctor’s body was spotted around 9.30am.
“Can you come immediately?” a voice said to be Sarkar’s is heard telling the victim’s father in the first of three audio clips circulating online. She tells him his daughter has taken ill but doesn’t elaborate. When the father seeks details about the illness, the caller replies, “Doctors will tell you once you come. We got your number and called you.” The conversation lasts 32 seconds.
The second call, 18 seconds long, was apparently made by the junior doctor’s father to Sarkar within five minutes of the first. “We have taken your daughter to the emergency room. She is critical. Please come fast,” Sarkar says in the clip.
A voice said to be of the victim’s mother is heard saying in the background that her daughter was supposed to be “on duty” before the call is disconnected.
The third call, made by Sarkar to the family within three minutes of the second one, breaks the news of the junior doctor’s death. “She has died by suicide, perhaps…We are in front of the hospital with everyone. Please come fast,” the caller says during the conversation lasting 56 seconds.
Sarkar did not respond to calls and texts from TOI.
The victim’s father said Thursday that he recorded each of the three calls but wasn’t aware of how they became public. The recordings are part of the docket police gave to CBI when the central agency took over the probe on Calcutta HC’s orders.
In her statement to CBI and police, Sarkar said RG Kar hospital’s head of respiratory medicine, Arunabha Dutta Chowdhury, instructed her to call the family but not reveal the truth, fearing they “would not be able to bear the shock”. CBI sources quoted Sarkar as saying she became increasingly “nervous” with each call and blurted out the word “suicide” during the third conversation.
“The audio clips buttress our version,” said Kolkata Police DCP Indira Mukherjee. “Police never made any call to the family to tell them that the victim’s death was by suicide. The audio clips confirm that.”
The victim’s mother pointed to “inconsistencies” in details of how her daughter’s body was found. “According to a colleague of my daughter, around 3am, she was found sleeping in the seminar hall, covered in a red shawl. However, a video clip later aired on news channels showed her body wrapped in a blue shawl. When we were allowed to enter the seminar hall to identify the body around 3.30pm, we found a green shawl covering her,” she said.
DCP Mukherjee said “there was no green shawl seen or mentioned anywhere”. “All case documents are with CBI, one can also cross-check with them…There was a judicial inquest, a seizure memo, all of which mentioned a blue shawl. Everything has been videographed.”
Police said a red shawl may have been used by the victim when she was asleep, but her assailant cast that off and replaced it with a blue shawl as part of an attempt to destroy evidence.
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