Video of ex-principal’s aides at RG Kar hall puts question mark on police role | India News – Times of India

KOLKATA: A 43-second video went viral on Monday purportedly showing some confidants of former RGKMCH principal Sandip Ghosh and cops at the seminar hall after the resident doctor’s body was found on Aug 9 morning, triggering allegations about laxity in securing the scene of crime, report Tamaghna Banerjee, Rohit Khanna & Sanjib Chakraborty.
Police said though the site in the video was the hall where the crime took place, people had assembled beyond the 40-ft section that was cordoned off.
People in video were outside cordoned-off area: Police
An officer said police had arrived at the scene about 40 minutes after the body was found at 9.30am. “There was a 40-minute delay in alerting police. The moment we came to know of the crime, our officers ran upstairs and cordoned off the place with white curtains that are used in a hospital as view cutters,” said another officer at Lalbazar, Kolkata Police’s headquarters.
Among those visible in the video are forensic medicine & toxicology department demonstrator Debashis Som and two associates of Ghosh — lawyer Santanu De and Calcutta NMCH data entry operator Prasun Chattopadhyay. De has claimed that he was at one of the OPDs in the hospital and went to the spot after he heard the news.
DC (central) Indira Mukherjee told reporters at Lalbazar in the evening that the area in the seminar hall where the body was found had been cordoned off to prevent contamination of the crime scene. “The seminar hall is a 51ft×32ft room. When the body was discovered, hospital curtains were used to cordon off a 40ft×32ft area. The only persons allowed here were investigators, forensic experts, cops, forensic photographers, men assigned to shift the body, victims’ parents and a relative. All who can be seen in the video were standing in the remaining 11ft×32ft area. The place of occurrence (of crime) where the body was found wasn’t tampered at all,” she added.
Mukherjee said among those present outside the cordoned-off zone included the victim’s family members, hospital officials, policemen, junior doctors and Ghosh’s lawyer. The kin were later allowed inside the scene of crime.
“This area was segregated in the conference hall as junior doctors were not letting the body to be taken out. They made a list of multiple demands while standing in the hall and we made room for them to write down the demands which kept changing from time to time. We also called the medical officer from the emergency to the hall where he issued the death certificate,” said Banerjee.