Kolkata Police chief accuses media of spreading disinformation, 9 arrested for vandalism at R.G. Kar

Late at night on Wednesday, in the aftermath of a large mob invading the premises of Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital to go on a vandalising spree, Kolkata Police (KP) commissioner Vineet Goyal lost his temper with the media surrounding him as he visited the spot.

The hospital has made national and international news as the scene of a grisly murder and sexual assault of a young woman doctor, whose body was discovered on 9 August in a fourth-floor seminar room.

Having arrested the alleged perpetrator – a civic volunteer attached to the KP outpost at the hospital – within a few hours of the discovery, the police were driven on to the back foot from the word go in an apparent bid to defend one of their ‘own’.

At the only press briefing he conducted on the incident, Goyal appeared visibly annoyed when asked about the identity of the arrested accused, despite the fact that his name and profession were all over the media by then. This defensive approach was to continue for the duration of the four days that the case was with KP before Calcutta High Court handed it over to the CBI.  

It was primarily a result of the silence maintained by KP that it began to come in for mounting criticism in the media for allegedly shielding the culprit(s) and not securing the crime scene. They were also accused of having let off some ‘insiders’ of the college, believed to be close to the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).

A major allegation was that they had falsely informed the family that the doctor had died by suicide, a claim that has since been denied by KP on its social media pages, clarifying that it was actually someone from the hospital who called the parents.

The silence from KP about the investigation also meant that several social media influencers picked up whatever information they could glean from whatever ‘source’ they could find, and their posts were amplified by thousands of netizens, without any of the information being verified.

On Wednesday night, as thousands of Kolkata residents came out on the streets to march in solidarity with the deceased as part of a ‘Reclaim the Night’ movement by its women, a mob of “5,000-7,000 people” — as per a social media post by KP — rushed into the college well past midnight and destroyed the emergency room.

Completely outnumbered, the handful of police personnel at the spot attempted a fightback but were reportedly forced to seek shelter as many among them picked up major and minor injuries. Members of the mob also reportedly assaulted interns and junior doctors sitting on the premises as part of an ongoing protest against their colleague’s death, as well as a few relatives of patients. Nine persons are reported to have been arrested

Countless social media posts began to circulate immediately, claiming the police had deliberately allowed the mob to ‘destroy evidence’, without really explaining what evidence if any could have survived nearly a week after the incident, that too in areas through which hundreds of people have been coming and going.

Some posts alleged that the mob comprised goons close to the ruling party, and the design was to divert attention from the historic women’s vigil for justice. 

At about 2.00 am, Goyal faced the media and furiously denied the allegations made against his department. “We have not done anything wrong. We did everything we could. But the falsehood spread by the media and the malicious propaganda on social media made people lose their trust in us.”

In an X post earlier on Wednesday, KP had restated its point about the family of the deceased confirming that the call about the ‘suicide’ was made from the hospital. They also denied allegations that the police had hurriedly cremated the body, saying the cremation was performed by the family once the postmortem was done.

Reacting to an X post by journalist Barkha Dutt, who alleged that the emergency room where the rape and murder was committed was allowed to be vandalised, KP pointed out that the scene of the crime was not the emergency room but a seminar hall, which remains intact. ‘Please stop spreading falsehood or else we will take action,’ it said.  

KP has also refuted claims — which went super viral on social media — that the pelvic girdle and collar bone of the deceased were broken. They also sought to debunk the claim published by a major local media house that ‘150 grams’ (sic) of semen had been found in the body. To begin with, it would have been ‘150 ml’ of semen, senior officers said, a quantity that would require at least 100 men, given the amount of semen the male body produces at a time.

Early this morning, it also posted images of the alleged miscreants at R.G. Kar, asking for the public's help in identifying them. Inevitably, a huge amount of trolling followed.

However, these initiatives have probably come too late in the day for KP to gain a toehold in the social media game.

KP may have maintained a studied silence on the profession of the arrested accused, the fact remains that civic volunteers are mostly political appointees, and the police have nothing to do with their recruitment or training. In the past, KP had also requested that civic volunteers be posted to other departments, since working with the police required a special skillset. The requests were apparently overruled.

Knowledgeable sources claim that the arrested civic volunteer was politically influential and patronised by one or more police officers close to the TMC. He was allegedly allowed to use an official motorcycle for which he was not eligible, and provided accommodation in barracks meant for regular constables.

According to media reports, a belated background check of the arrested accused revealed that he had a troubled past, was married multiple times, and carried allegations of sexual perversion and domestic violence against him, as per an old FIR.

Police sources, however, pointed out that civic volunteers do not undergo background checks because their appointments are not done through the department. These volunteers, who most often help in traffic duties, typically find employment on the recommendations of TMC leaders, making them unaccountable to their bosses within the force.

This scandal is likely to blow up sooner or later, and the state government, the TMC, and chief minister Mamata Banerjee will clearly be hard-put to defend the practice.