Bengal Police SIT submits papers to CBI on financial irregularities at RG Kar Hospital

Going by a Calcutta High Court order passed on Friday directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the probe into the alleged financial irregularities in the state-run RG Kar Hospital in Kolkata, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of West Bengal police handed over all related papers and documents to the central agency officials on Saturday.

Sources from the state police said that while the direction of the single-judge Bench of Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj to the SIT was to complete the process of document handover by 10 A.M. on Saturday, in reality the process was finished by 9.30 A.M. that is 30 minutes earlier than the court's deadline.

While directing the CBI to take over the probe into the financial irregularities at RJ Kar during the tenure of the former principal Sandip Ghosh, Justice Bharadwaj observed that since the central agency was already investigating the rape and murder of a doctor at RG Kar, it was better for the same agency to carry out the probe into the charges of financial irregularities at the hospital.

CBI officials have been grilling Ghosh on a daily basis for 12 to 14 hours since August 16 in connection with the doctor's rape and murder case.

The Calcutta High Court has given the investigating agency officials the task to find out whether there is any direct or indirect link between the two cases.

Already, representatives of the medical fraternity have claimed that the ghastly rape and murder had a number of hidden factors.

They claim that there was a probability of the woman doctor being aware of some of the irregularities going on at RG Kar.

Doubts on this count have been strengthened by the fact that soon after Justice Bharadwaj's Bench ordered the CBI probe, Ghosh approached a Division Bench of Calcutta High Court challenging the single-judge Bench's order.

(With inputs from IANS)