RG Kar: HC rejects admissibility of Bengal govt’s plea seeking death penalty for convict

Kolkata: A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court on Friday morning rejected the admissibility of the petition by the West Bengal government seeking death penalty for Sanjay Roy, the sole convict in the R.G. Kar rape and murder tragedy.

However, a similar petition by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) also seeking death penalty for Roy has been accepted by the Division Bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi.

The Division Bench also observed that as the investigation agency in the rape and murder crime, only the CBI reserves the right to file a petition in the matter and the state government does not have any locus standi to file such a petition. The hearing on the admissibility of the petitions by both CBI and the state government concluded on January 27.

However, the Division Bench reserved the judgment on that day. Last month a special court in Kolkata sentenced Roy to life imprisonment for the crime of rape and murder of the woman junior doctor of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in August last year.

The judge of the special court Anirban Das observed that since the crime could not be considered as the “rarest of rare”, the sole convict was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death penalty.

Thereafter, first the West Bengal government and then the CBI approached the court challenging the special court order and seeking death penalty for Roy. The CBI, at the same time, challenged the locus standi of the state government in making such an appeal.

However, the parents of the victim have already claimed that they do not want the death penalty for Roy since they believe that the erstwhile civic volunteer attached to the Kolkata Police was not the sole culprit in the ghastly rape and murder of their daughter.

The victim’s parents have already been subjected to unprecedented verbal attacks from a section of the ruling Trinamool Congress leadership for their observation against the death penalty for the sole convict now.