When a ghastly crime becomes fodder for ‘Khela hobey’ politics, it’s changing time

West Bengal administration has proceeded with the horrific case.

Last Friday, when Di's body was discovered, authorities of Kolkata's RG Kar Medical College & Hospital tried to pass off the murder as suicide to the victim's family. The police initially did the same. After all, why on Earth would a state-affiliated institution's authorities lie?

Trying to pass off homicide as suicide is SOP if you want to put a lid on things. Self-sexual assault — self-rape — is, however, far more difficult to spin. So, a case of rape-murder it has officially become.

RG Kar principal Sandip Ghosh resigned three days later — 'I can't take this insult anymore' — from post and government service. But a conscience can be like ill-tended bougainvillea — it blooms and then suddenly dies. Within hours of his resignation, the government transferred him to Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital. That's like punishing a hotel manager for bad service by shifting him from Taj Lands End to Taj Santacruz.

His misdemeanour? Allowing Sanjoy Roy, a member of Civic Police Volunteer Force — currently a 1,19,916-strong informal system of policing introduced by the TMC government in 2012, largely to facilitate party cadres — to have unlimited access to the hospital. Roy had a reputation of collecting hafta, prevalent in most state hospitals here. But he was a 'party chap'. Much like the principal.

Roy has been arrested, even as it's suspected that he wasn't a lone wolf, if one of the 'wolves' at all. Rumours of a racket of 'hospital