Kolkata: The news of the promotion of Seema Pahuja, the investigation officer in the case of ghastly rape and murder of a woman junior doctor of state-run R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, within the hospital premises in August 2024, has left the parents of the victim frustrated.
Recently, CBI released a list of Additional Superintendents being promoted to the rank of Superintendents.
The list contained the name of Pahuja, who had been elevated from the position of Additional Superintendent of CBI’s anti-corruption branch in Chandigarh to the position of Superintendent of CBI’s special crime branch in New Delhi. At the same time, she had been retained as the investigation officer in the R.G. Kar rape and murder case.
The investigation led by Pahuja concluded that Sanjay Roy, an erstwhile civic volunteer of Kolkata Police, was the sole culprit in the crime of rape and murder. Roy was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial court in Kolkata.
Since then, the victim’s parents had been accusing Pahuja of neglecting an independent and effective line of investigation and instead just echoing the point-of-view expressed by Kolkata Police in the initial investigation, claiming that Roy was the sole accused in the crime of rape and murder.
Reacting to Pahuja’s promotion, the victim’s mother told media persons on Friday that she does not deserve the promotion.
“She should not have been promoted, but rather jailed for the manner in which she investigated our daughter’s case. The CBI investigation into the larger conspiracy behind the crime is still on. After progressing a bit in the matter, we will also file a case against Pahuja,” the victim’s mother said.
The victim’s father claimed that Pahuja should have given up the charge of the investigation if she was unable to carry out a proper investigation into the matter.
“What she did was sign on the dotted line to what Kolkata Police concluded in the matter,” the victim’s father said.
Pahuja is not the only CBI officer blamed by the victim’s parents for an allegedly lackadaisical probe in the case. In July last year, the victim’s parents expressed doubts at a trial court in Kolkata that the ongoing CBI probe in the matter might not be a neutral one, considering a top official of the probe agency and a senior officer cop of the West Bengal Police Department drawing controversy in the same case were of the same IPS batch.
One of the two cops named in the court by the victim’s parents was the CBI’s Additional Director, Sampat Meena, the overall in-charge of the probe into the case. The cop from West Bengal named by the counsel of the victim’s parents in the matter was the then Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Kumar Goyal.
To recall, Goyal was the city police chief when the ghastly crime occurred in August last year, and the initial investigation into the matter started under his leadership.
However, following a massive public uproar, Goyal was removed from the chair of the city police chief soon after.
Later, CBI also took over the investigation following an order from the Calcutta High Court.
Both Sampat Meena and Vineet Kumar Goyal were IPS officers of the 1994 batch.
(IANS)
