Kolkata, Aug 19, 2024
Seema Pahuja, a CBI officer who was part of the investigating team that probed the 2020 Hathras gang-rape and murder case, has been included in the agency’s team investigating the rape and murder of a junior doctor at the state-run R.G. Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata earlier this month.
On September 14, 2020, a 19-year-old Dalit girl was gang-raped in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district by four men allegedly belonging to the upper caste. The girl was shifted to a hospital in Delhi for treatment where she died two weeks later, triggering nationwide outrage.
Pahuja, who is currently posted as an Additional Superintendent with the CBI, is a Police Medal recipient and has been attached to the agency’s special crime unit for some time now.
Meanwhile, the CBI on Monday approached a lower court in Kolkata seeking permission to conduct a NARCO test of Sanjay Roy, a civic volunteer and the only person arrested in the case so far.
Sources said Roy’s NARCO test is crucial since there have been a lot of inconsistencies in the statements made by him during interrogation by the CBI officers.
Roy, a civic volunteer who was posted at the police outpost of the hospital, was arrested on the basis of CCTV footage. While local media reported that Roy admitted to the crime, many people are saying the rape and murder couldn’t have been the handiwork of one person.
Roy was handed over to the CBI by the Kolkata Police after the Calcutta High Court last week directed a central agency probe into the matter.
On Monday evening, a CBI team reached the Kolkata Police headquarters to collect CCTV footage of the places where Roy was seen before and after the crime.
Earlier in the day, CBI officers went to the residence of the victim girl and spoke to her family members.
To recall, three of the four men accused in the Hathras case were set free by an Uttar Pradesh court in March, 2023. The fourth accused — Sandeep Sisodia — was found guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.(Agency)
