Calls from an overseas mobile number to select officials and doctors of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on the morning of August 9 are currently under the scanner of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the rape and murder of a woman doctor.
The junior doctor's body was discovered in the seminar hall of the hospital on the same morning.
Sources said that the central agency sleuths tracked the call lists of the officials and doctors of the hospital who were present at the reported scene of the crime after the recovery of the body. The call lists of some of them showed incoming calls coming from an overseas mobile number.
Sources added that the CBI sleuths doubt that the overseas number used for making the call is a pre-paid and rechargeable SIM card, the tracking of whose owner and the details is a timeconsuming process.
Hence, the investigating officials investigating the rape and murder case in Kolkata have forwarded the same number to their higher authorities so that the latter can seek the help of the country's external affairs wings to track the details of the owner of the SIM card.
Meanwhile, sources added, the central agency officials here in Kolkata are interrogating the officials and doctors of RG Kar who reportedly received the calls from that overseas number and were trying to figure out the subject of conversations there.
Sources further said that most of these officials and doctors receiving the calls from this overseas mobile number were known to be extremely close confidants of Sandip Ghosh, the former and controversial principal of R.G. Kar who is currently in CBI custody in connection with the financial irregularities case in the same hospital.
The CBI is conducting a parallel probe in the rape and murder as well as the financial irregularities cases, both being court-ordered and court-monitored.
On Tuesday evening, that is a day after CBI took Ghosh into custody, the West Bengal health department issued a notification suspending the latter from state medical services.
(With inputs from IANS)