West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed dissatisfaction over the court giving life imprisonment to the convict in the RG Kar hospital rape-murder case and claimed that the probe was "forcibly" taken away from the Kolkata Police, and asserted that had it been with them, they would have ensured a death penalty.
"All of us had demanded a death sentence, but the court has given a life term until death. The case was forcibly taken from us. Had it been with the (Kolkata) police, we would have ensured that he was served a death sentence," she claimed.
"We don't know how the probe was conducted. In many similar cases that were probed by the state police, death penalty was ensured. I am not satisfied," she said.
The court sentenced Sanjay Roy to life imprisonment until death after he was convicted of the rape and murder of the on-duty doctor at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. The court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Anirban Das in Sealdah had on Saturday found Roy guilty of the crime committed against the postgraduate trainee doctor at the hospital on August 9 last year, which sparked unprecedented and prolonged nationwide protests.
Judge Das said the crime did not fall under the "rarest of the rare" category, for not imposing the death penalty on the convict.
The case, which involves the rape and murder of a trainee doctor whose body was found on August 9 in the hospital's seminar room, sparked widespread protests. After the incident, Sanjay Roy, a civic volunteer at the hospital, was arrested in connection with the crime.