Kolkata Doctor Death: With the CBI taking over the investigation of the RG Kar doctor's rape and murder, all eyes are now on the central agency's team. While the Bengal Opposition continues to target the Mamata Banerjee government over her alleged "failure" to ensure the safety of women, the ruling Trinamool Congress alleges a "BJP toolkit" in play to derail the CBI's investigation. Amid all the political mudslinging over the CBI's "neutral approach", the attention has moved to two officers on the agency's team investigating the Kolkata doctor's death case.
The two officers in focus are Sampat Meena and Seema Pahuja. Sampat Meena, a 1994-batch IPS officer from Jharkhand, handled the 2020 Hathras rape & murder and the 2017 Unnao rape cases. She will be working alongside Additional Superintendent of Police Seema Pahuja, who also played a major role in the Hathras case investigation.
Meena, an Additional Director in the CBI, has 25 officers in her team and will supervise the Kolkata doctor death investigation. The on-ground investigation will be led by Pahuja, a highly decorated officer with two Gold medals for her exceptional work between 2007 and 2018. Pahuja had once considered taking voluntary retirement due to family obligations but was persuaded to remain in the force by the then CBI Director.
Pahuja is known for her success in the case of the 2017 rape and the murder of a Class 10 student in Himachal Pradesh, known as the 'Gudiya case'. The case gripped the state after a girl disappeared on her way home from school. Her body was found two days later. A probe revealed that she had been raped and murdered.
In 2021, Anil Kumar, a woodcutter, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime. The case was cracked using advanced DNA techniques, including percentage and lineage matching. After questioning over 1,000 locals and testing the DNA of more than 250 individuals, a match was eventually found through the father of the accused, leading to the arrest.
Another major feather in Pahuja's cap was the conviction of former BJP leader and MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar in the 2017 Unnao rape case. Through Pahuja's efforts, Sengar was sentenced to life imprisonment for the gang rape of a 17-year-old Dalit girl, reported news website NDTV. Sengar was also convicted for the custodial death of the girl’s father and got a 10-year jail term for this.
Both Meena and Pahuja were also involved in the investigation of the 2020 Hathras case, which sparked outrage across the nation. In this case, a 19-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly gang-raped by four men from an upper caste. She succumbed to her injuries two weeks later at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi.
The victim's body was cremated by the Uttar Pradesh Police and local administration without the family's consent or presence. This created a massive furore. Ultimately, three of the four accused were acquitted, while the fourth, Sandeep Thakur, was convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, but not for rape or murder.
The handling of the Hathras case led to widespread criticism of the state police, with allegations of major failures throughout the investigation, from delays in filing the FIR to the denial of rape and the hurried cremation. In response to the public outcry, five police officers, including the Superintendent of Police, were suspended by the state government on October 3, 2020.