'Justice has not been delivered,' says Brinda Karat about RG Kar judgement

New Delhi, Jan 20 (PTI) The judgment in the RG Kar case is "as strange as it is unsatisfactory" and does not deliver justice, said Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat on Monday.

Reacting to the life sentence given to Sanjay Roy, who was convicted of raping and murdering an on-duty doctor at the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, the CPI(M) Politburo member said the CBI had followed the same approach as the state government in believing that a single man was responsible for the incident.

"The judgment is as strange as it is unsatisfactory because the investigation itself is flawed. The state government, right from the beginning, has protected the authorities responsible for the destruction of evidence and therefore there are so many unanswered questions," Karat told PTI.

"The CBI, instead of correcting this, seems to have gone the same way as the state government, believing the impossible -- that a single man can be responsible for the rape and murder of a young woman in a public hospital, in a public space, and nobody knew anything about it or was involved," she said.

"These are questions that remain unanswered, and they were ignored by the state government's approach, which is to conceal the crime. The CBI has followed the same path in this investigation, and now this judgment," she added.

"In the present law, death penalties are given only in the rarest of rare cases… In Kerala, today, a girl found guilty of murdering her boyfriend by poisoning him was given a death sentence. In the RG Kar case, Roy received a life sentence and a fine of Rs 50,000. How arbitrary the sentencing is," she said.

"Justice has not been delivered. I would go so far as to say that even if the death sentence had been given, it would still be incomplete to believe that a single man committed this crime. On many fronts, it is very unsatisfactory," the CPI(M) leader added.

A Kolkata court sentenced Sanjay Roy to life imprisonment until death on Monday.

Additional District and Sessions Judge in Sealdah, Anirban Das, had on Saturday found Roy guilty of committing the crime against the postgraduate trainee doctor on August 9 last year. The heinous crime triggered nationwide outrage and prolonged protests in West Bengal.

The court also ordered Roy to pay a Rs 50,000 fine and directed the state government to pay Rs 17 lakh in compensation to the family of the deceased doctor. PTI AO AO ARD ARD