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The parents of the junior woman doctor from the state-run RG Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata, who was raped and murdered on the hospital premises, approached the Calcutta High Court on Monday, June 23, with two key appeals.
Their counsel, senior advocate Phiroze Edulji, filed the petitions before the single-judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh. The first plea requests a fast-track hearing for the ongoing case at the High Court. The second seeks permission for the parents to visit and survey the reported crime scene within the hospital. Justice Ghosh admitted the petitions.
The horrific case is currently being heard in three courts. At the trial court in Kolkata, civic volunteer Sanjay Roy— the sole convict— was sentenced earlier this year to life imprisonment for the rape and murder. The trial court is now hearing a related matter on a larger conspiracy involving evidence tampering during the initial police investigation by Kolkata Police, before the case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Meanwhile, two separate cases connected to this matter are ongoing in the Calcutta High Court: one filed by the victim’s parents seeking a fresh investigation into the rape and murder, and the other, the CBI’s appeal seeking the death penalty for the convict. Simultaneously, the Supreme Court is also hearing a related matter.
The CBI has submitted four status reports on its investigation of the larger conspiracy behind the crime to the trial court. However, the victim’s family’s counsel has accused the agency of using ambiguous language in its reports and of conducting a lackadaisical probe from the start.