Akhtar Ali, the former administrative staff of Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital who leaked evidence of corruption against the institution’s former principal, Dr Sandip Ghosh, after the August 2024 rape and murder of a trainee doctor, was remanded in judicial custody on Tuesday after he surrendered before a designated Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court, lawyers said.
“On February 6, the CBI court in Kolkata issued an arrest warrant against Ali, a former non-medical deputy superintendent of the hospital, for failing to appear despite receiving five summon notices. He surrendered on Tuesday and was remanded in judicial custody till February 17,” a lawyer representing CBI said, requesting anonymity.
Ali’s counsel told the court on February 6 that he had met with an accident at home and was hospitalised with spinal injuries but the judge rejected his bail prayer. Although Ali appeared before the media after the trainee doctor’s death as a “whistle blower”, the CBI filed a case against him stating that he, too, was involved in the same corruption.
Before being taken to a correctional home on Tuesday, Ali told the media in the court premises that he concealed some facts when CBI questioned him. “When CBI officials questioned me about my bank accounts I made a childish mistake by not telling them that I had borrowed some money for my brother’s treatment,” Ali said.
In a parallel development on February 6, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is also investigating the alleged corruption, filed its first charge sheet against Dr Sandip Ghosh and two vendors, Biplab Sinha and Suman Hazra, who supplied medical equipment to the hospital during Ghosh’s tenure when tender rules were allegedly violated. Hazra’s company, Hazra Chemicals, was also named in the charge sheet.
CBI, which is probing the rape and murder case under orders from the Calcutta High Court, started a separate corruption case against Ghosh and filed is first charge sheet against him and four others in November 2024.
Ali claimed on Tuesday that he has some evidence related to the junior doctor’s death. “I will reveal it after I am released from judicial custody,” he said.
The body of the 31-year-old victim was found in the seminar room on the third floor of the emergency building of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on the morning of August 9, 2024. The incident triggered widespread protests.
On August 10, the Kolkata police arrested Sanjay Roy, a 34-year-old civic volunteer who worked for the city police. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2025 but the victim’s parents still claim that the masterminds got away.
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