Kolkata: CBI arrested Sandip Ghosh, former RG Kar Medical College and Hospital principal, on Monday evening after questioning him the entire day, whisking him away from the Special Crime Branch’s (SCB) offices in Salt Lake’s CGO Complex to the anti-corruption branch’s (ACB) offices at Nizam Palace.
SCB is probing the rape-murder; ACB is probing corruption cases against Ghosh and three others. Ghosh’s arrest caps 17 days of questioning and two polygraph tests in the 21 days since CBI took over the probe from cops.
Three others have also been arrested in connection with the corruption case: Biplab Singha (owner of Ma Tara Traders, an RG Kar vendor); Suman Hazra (owner of a medical shop in Howrah, which allegedly sold recycled medicines from RG Kar Hospital); and Afsar Ali, Ghosh’s security guard.
Ghosh had been at the SCB’s CGO Complex office since 10am, answering questions in connection with the rape-murder. Just before 7pm, he was taken out and whisked away in a car to CBI’s Nizam Palace office. He was arrested around 8pm.
On Aug 12, facing backlash over his handling of the RG Kar incident, Ghosh had resigned as principal, only to be reinstated within hours as principal of Calcutta National Medical College – a move that was heavily criticised by Calcutta High Court, which ordered him to go on long leave.
Senior health department officials will meet on Tuesday to decide Ghosh’s fate. A 48-hour custody will lead to immediate suspension, but the state may not wait that long, said sources. Trinamool’s former MP, Kunal Ghosh, said: “He has been arrested, possibly on a corruption charge. He and his lawyers will speak on the matter. The party has nothing to say. These charges (against him) were heard long back. Had Swasthya Bhavan acted on them, they could have averted this embarrassment.”
On Aug 24, the anti-corruption branch of CBI registered an FIR into alleged financial irregularities at RG Kar following an order from Calcutta High Court. The agency named Ghosh in the FIR, apart from another individual – Khama Louha – and two companies (Ma Tara Traders and Ehsan Cafe). While CBI officers started looking into alleged irregularities at the college and hospital, they came across vendors who were handed out contracts amounting to crores without bids and illegal sales of medicine and medical equipment allocated to the hospital.
Ghosh’s importance in the RG Kar saga goes beyond what CBI may charge him with in the hospital corruption cases and irregularities.
The former RG Kar principal has, for hundreds of doctors and other officials working in the state health department, come to symbolise – along with a few of his colleagues – all that is wrong with the health department’s state. A cross-section of health department officials blames him – and the “North Bengal lobby”, of which he is one of the most prominent faces – for a variety of ills. They range from everyday corruption charges in hospital equipment procurement to allegations that are much more debilitating for the system in the long run: gaming the MBBS examination by favouring or discriminating against young students for cash as well as “political” considerations.
RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, in particular, has been run like a fiefdom by the “North Bengal lobby” with Ghosh as its spearhead. RG Kar professors say they had become used to waiting for their turn to enter the former principal’s chamber even as a motley assembly of students and junior doctors belonging to the “North Bengal lobby” and, sometimes, even laboratory technicians and police constables or civic volunteers, spent hours inside.
The health department has been aware of the goings-on and Ghosh has been transferred at least twice out of RG Kar in the recent past. Each time, however, he returned more powerful. One of the transfer orders last year was rescinded in a couple of days and another in a few weeks.
“We knew everything but each episode told us, in very humiliating terms, that we were squaring up with someone who was much more powerful than us,” a senior health department official, several rungs above Ghosh in the hierarchy, told TOI.
It remains to be seen whether CBI gets enough on Ghosh to implicate him in the alleged efforts to cover up the crime as well.
