RG Kar rape-murder accused denies crime in polygraph test
Sanjay Roy has denied raping or murdering the second-year postgraduate trainee at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.
According to an India Today report on Saturday, September 7, sources confided to it that during the polygraph or lie-detector test on August 25, conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Kolkata’s Presidency Central Correctional Home, where Roy is being held, he said he ran away after seeing the body, and has therefore not conducted any crime.
Various reports doing the rounds say the victim was murdered first and then raped. Sanjay Roy, who is a Kolkata Police civic volunteer, is, so far, the only accused in the case.
Roy’s confession is in direct contradiction to what has generally been considered a given in the case so far. His footage was caught in the CCTV camera placed at the entrance to the corridor in which the seminal hall is located—on the third floor of the building housing the Chest Medicine Department—the hall where the trainee doctor’s body was found. He has, till now, been the only person seen entering the corridor a few minutes before the approximate time of the rape and murder, and on this basis, was arrested by Kolkata Police a few days after the crime. A Bluetooth device belonging to Roy was also found near the body.
Importantly, though, sources also told India Today that the lie detector test flagged several false and unconvincing answers.
It is also important to remember that a polygraph report is not admissible in court as evidence. The test is sometimes conducted by investigative agencies and the police (and always after the person concerned gives consent, as per law) to get leads on which to conduct further investigations.
Three polygraph experts along with the investigating officer of the CBI were present during Roy’s test, in which he was asked 10 questions.
Roy made similar claims before the additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM) court in Sealdah, during which hearing he agreed to give a polygraph test to prove his innocence.
The accused told the CBI, sources said, that he visited the red-light area of Sonagachi in north Kolkata before the incident and consumed alcohol. Kolkata Police said Roy was addicted to watching porn.
The contradictions in Sanjay Roy’s answers during the polygraph test are not limited to his alleged part in the crime. They extend to two other points.
According to a report by the news agency IANS, sources said that though Roy claimed that he was not personally acquainted with Sandip Ghosh, the doctor who was the then-principal of RG Kar Medical College and now an accused in a major money laundering case also being investigated by CBI, many in the hospital, in their statements given during questioning, claimed that it was Ghosh’s patronage that gave Roy the liberty to go anywhere within the hospital though he was only a civic volunteer.
Secondly, though Roy claimed that the Kolkata Police sub-inspector at whose quarter in the police barrack he stayed was only a professional acquaintance, some residents of the barrack during questioning said they knew each other closely and also that it was the latter’s political influence that enabled Roy to stay there (police barracks are meant exclusively for housing regular, on-roll lower-rank police personnel).
