Kolkata: It looks like skeletons are finally tumbling out of the cupboards. Besides Sandip Ghosh, the controversial former principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday arrested three other persons in connection with its investigation into alleged financial irregularities at the hospital where a junior doctor was found raped and murdered on the morning of August 9 when Ghosh was in charge of its affairs.
Sources said the three persons arrested by the CBI are Afsar Ali, Suman Hazra, and Biplab Sinha.
While Ali is Ghosh’s personal bodyguard, Sinha and Hazra are vendors who supplied medical equipment to R.G. Kar when Ghosh was its head of affairs.
Sources said the CBI had definite clues that these three persons were partners in crime with Ghosh in the alleged financial irregularities at the hospital.
The sources said Sinha and Hazra had been beneficiaries of the financial irregularities.
The main allegation against Ghosh concerns tendering different contracts to private and outsourced parties known to him after getting the necessary approval from the state Health Department and the college council.
Ghosh is also charged with obtaining infrastructure-related tasks at the hospital from private entities or individuals instead of following the standard practice of having them done by the state Public Works Department (PWD).
The sources said another serious charge is selling illegally obtained biomedical wastes from the hospital outside.
Ghosh is also accused of using the hospital to earn money through businesses run in the name of others, which is a serious offence on the part of a government official.
The most severe charge in the matter is selling organs of unidentified bodies coming to the hospital mortuary for post-mortem at lucrative rates.
After 16 days of questioning, the CBI arrested Ghosh on Monday evening.
On Monday morning, Ghosh appeared for interrogation at the CBI office in the CGO complex in Salt Lake, which houses the agency’s special crime unit that is conducting the probe into the rape and murder case.
After being questioned throughout the day, Ghosh was taken to CBI’s Nizam Palace office, which houses the agency’s economic offences wing. This wing is conducting a parallel probe into the allegations of financial irregularities at RG Kar.
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–IANS
