CBI arrests Sandip Ghosh's confidant in RG Kar financial irregularities case

Kolkata, Oct 3 (IANS) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday arrested a Trinamool Congress leader and a house-staff attached to R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital, Asish Pande, said to be a close confidant of Sandip Ghosh, in connection with the financial irregularities case pertaining to state-run medical college and hospital -- an angle that emerged in course of investigation into the rape-murder of a junior doctor.

Pande was also once summoned to the CBI's Salt Lake office earlier and questioned in connection with the matter.

Pande's name first surfaced in the second week of September, when the CBI officials found out that he had put up at a hotel in Salt Lake on the night of August 9, the day when the body of the junior woman doctor who was raped and murdered was discovered at the seminar hall within the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital complex.

He is the fifth person to be arrested by the CBI in connection with the financial irregularities at R.G Kar. Earlier, in September, Ghosh and three others were arrested in the same case.

The other three arrests made in this connection are Afsar Ali, Suman Hazra and Biplab Sinha.

While Ali is the personal bodyguard of Ghosh, Sinha and Hazra are vendors who were looking into the supply of medical equipment to R.G. Kar when Sandip Ghosh was the principal there.

Besides the financial irregularities case, the CBI is also conducting a parallel investigation against Ghosh in the rape and murder case.

A polygraph test of Ghosh was also conducted.

The main charges in the financial irregularities case are tendering of different contracts to private and outsourced parties of his confidence without getting the necessary approval from the state health department and the college council and getting the infrastructure-related tasks of the hospital done by private outsourced entities or individuals instead of following the standard practice of getting them done by the state public works department (PWD).

Another serious charge against Sandip Ghosh is selling biomedical waste from the hospital which is illegal.

There had also been allegations against Ghosh of using the hospital business in earning money through businesses run in the name of others, which is also considered a serious offence on the part of a government official.

The most disturbing charge in the matter is selling organs of unidentified bodies that were brought to the hospital mortuary for post-mortem, at "lucrative prices" outside.

--IANS

src/pgh