PIL filed in HC demanding ED probe against RG Kar ex-principal Sandip Ghosh

Kolkata, Aug 21 (IANS) A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed at the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday, demanding an Enforcement Directorate (ED) probe into the alleged financial irregularities at RG Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata when Sandip Ghosh was its principal. 

The Division Bench of Chief Justice TS Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya admitted the petition filed by the former Deputy Medical Superintendent of RG Kar Medical College & Hospital, Akhtar Ali.

The petition has become significant since the West Bengal government earlier this week announced the formation of a Special Investigation Team comprising senior Indian Police Service officers which would be headed by an officer of the rank of Inspector General, to prove the allegations of financial irregularities at the hospital under the command of Sandip Ghosh.

On Wednesday, Ali made another petition at the single-judge Bench of Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj seeking protection in anticipation of a security threat for coming out against Ghosh. Justice Bharadwaj admitted the petition.

Ali had claimed to media persons that he intimated the state Health Department two years ago about the financial irregularities at RG Kar hospital, however, his initiative failed to evoke any response from them at that point of time.

That is precisely why he had approached the Calcutta High Court with a plea for a probe by a central agency, he claimed.

Opposition parties have already claimed that the formation of the SIT by the state government was nothing but eyewash and it had been created not with the intention of revealing the truth behind the financial irregularities at the hospital but rather with the motive of destroying evidence in the matter.

Ghosh is currently on leave after the Calcutta High Court last week gave a clear instruction to the state Health Department not to appoint him as the head of any medical college in the state until further orders.