In Setback For Sandip Ghosh, Supreme Court Dismisses Plea Against CBI Probe

Sandip Ghosh was arrested by the CBI in the case on Monday

New Delhi:

The Supreme Court today dismissed the petition of former RG Kar Medical College and Hospital principal Sandip Ghosh, who has found himself at the center of a storm after a trainee doctor was raped and murdered at the institution last month, challenging a Calcutta High Court order transferring the investigation into the corruption case against him to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra also refused his plea to be added as a party to a petition alleging financial irregularities at the institute during his tenure.

“As an accused, you have no locus to intervene in the PIL where the Calcutta high court is monitoring the investigation,” the bench said.

The top court also refused to remove some comments by the High Court linking the corruption allegations with the rape of the trainee doctor in Kolkata on August 9.

The Calcutta High Court had ordered the transfer of the investigation into the alleged financial irregularities at the state-run hospital, where Ghosh had been the principal since 2021 – with a brief hiatus in between – from a special investigation team to the CBI on August 23.

The order had come after a former deputy superintendent of the facility, Dr Akhtar Ali, had sought an investigation into the alleged irregularities during Ghosh’s tenure as the head of the hospital.

Sandip Ghosh was arrested by the CBI in the case on Monday after being questioned several times in a span of two weeks.

In his petition before the Supreme Court, Ghosh said the Calcutta High Court did not hear his side while ordering the CBI investigation into the corruption case against him. He argued that he filed a petition in the High Court seeking to make himself a party, but it was rejected. This, he claimed, proved that the principles of natural justice were not followed.