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A day after the body of the trainee doctor was found at Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College on August 9, former principal Sandip Ghosh ordered repairs and renovation inside the institution. India Today has exclusively accessed a letter written by Ghosh on August 10 to the PWD, asking them for repair, renovation, and reconstruction of on-duty doctors' rooms in all departments of RG Kar.
"I would like to inform you that there are deficiency of on-duty doctors' rooms and separate attached toilets in various departments of RG Kar Hospital. You are hereby requested to do the needful immediately as per demand of resident doctors of RG Kar Hospital," the letter written by Ghosh, who resigned from his post following a massive outrage over the incident, said.
The 31-year-old doctor was raped and murdered inside the seminar hall of the hospital, triggering huge protests from healthcare professionals across the country over workplace safety concerns. A civic volunteer attached to the Kolkata Police, Sanjay Roy, has been arrested.
Sandip Ghosh has already been arrested by the CBI in connection with alleged financial irregularities at the hospital.
A controversy had erupted over allegations that a part of the seminar room was being reconstructed after a video had gone viral of construction in the hospital.
However, the administration later clarified that the video was not of the seminar room but of another room in the same corridor. The reconstruction was then stopped.
In August, the Calcutta High Court questioned the West Bengal government over its "urgency" to renovate portions near the crime scene.
"Is it so important to provide a restroom within 12 hours to meet urgency? You go to any district court complex, see if ladies have any restrooms. I say this with responsibility. What has the PWD done? See the condition of the restrooms in the court complexes," the Chief Justice said.
Refuting allegations that the renovation was ordered to destroy evidence, the state government's counsel said the demolition work was not near the crime scene.
"All these allegations that the place of occurrence (of the crime) has been demolished, destroyed, nothing is correct. The demolition work that happened was not near the place of occurrence," the government's counsel said.
