RG Kar financial case: Court rejects Sandip Ghosh’s plea seeking additional time before framing charges

Kolkata, Feb 5 (IANS) A single-judge bench of Calcutta High Court, on Wednesday, again rejected a plea by the former principal of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata seeking additional time for framing charge against him in the institute’s multi-crore financial irregularities case.

The charge-framing process was supposed to start at the special court on Wednesday. However, it could not start since Ghosh and others accused in the case approached the same bench of the Calcutta High Court which rejected their similar petitions last week with a review petition.

On January 31, the single-judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh rejected the first petitions by Ghosh and others and instead stuck to its earlier order directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to ensure that the charge-framing process starts at the special court by February 6.

On Wednesday, the accused approached the bench of Justice Ghosh with a review petition against the earlier order of the same bench last week.

However, Justice Ghosh rejected the review petition and also questioned its admissibility. Justice Ghosh also observed that he rejected the earlier petition on this count after considering a lot of things.

Besides CBI, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is also conducting a parallel probe in the case of financial irregularities at R.G. Kar. While CBI started its investigation in the matter following an order by the Calcutta High Court, ED made a suo motu entry in the matter to investigate the money laundering angle after filing an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR).

Five persons have been named by CBI in its chargesheet. They are Sandip Ghosh, his assistant-cum- bodyguard Afsar Alir, private contractors Biplab Sinha and Suman Hazra and a junior doctor Ashish Pandey. All of them are in judicial custody now.

The main charges in the case include manipulation in the tendering process of R.G. Kar, getting infrastructure-related work done there by private contractors bypassing the state public works department against the hefty commission, smuggling of bio-medical wastes from the hospital outside and finally selling organs of the unidentified bodies coming to R.G. Kar morgue for post-mortem purposes in the open market at premium prices.

–IANS

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