KOLKATA: Three purported audio recordings of phone calls, allegedly made by RG Kar Medical College authorities on August 9 morning to the parents of the rape-murder victim asking them to report to the hospital, hit the public domain on Thursday and sparked a fresh controversy over “insensitivity” and “disinformation” of the institute’s management in breaking bad news.
The changes in statements on the status of the victim made by an official in those phone calls, whose authenticity PTI has not individually verified, raise questions on whether the hospital was initially trying to cover up the ghastly crime.
The caller, a woman who identified herself as the assistant superintendent of the hospital, reportedly dialed the parents of the victim from the same number thrice within a span of around 30 minutes asking their urgent presence at the facility.
“I am calling from RG Kar hospital. Can you come over immediately?” the caller could be heard telling the victim’s father when he picked his phone the first time around 10.53 that morning.
The father responded, “Why? What has happened?” To this, the caller replied, “Your daughter has fallen a little ill. We are admitting her in the hospital. Can you come down quickly?”
When the parent insisted on more details, the caller was heard saying, “Those details only doctors can provide. We only managed to find your number and call you. Please come down quickly. The patient has been admitted after falling ill. The rest, the doctors will brief you after you arrive.”
The worried mother of the victim could be heard asking from the background, “Is she running a fever?”
“Come over quickly,” was the caller’s reply.
“Is her condition very serious?” the father’s voice was heard asking. “Yes, she is very serious. Come quickly,” was the response from the other end.
The call lasted for a minute and 11 seconds.
The second phone call, which lasted for about 46 seconds, arrived some five minutes later. It was perceptively from the same caller and she was heard saying, “Her condition is critical, very critical. Please come over as soon as you can.”
To a desperate appeal from the father asking what happened to his daughter, the voice at the other end repeated, “Only doctors can say that.
You please come over.”
When the father asked her to reveal her identity, the caller said, “I am the assistant superintendent. I am not a doctor. We have brought your daughter to the emergency ward. You please come over and contact us.”
“But what could have happened to her? She was on duty,” a panic-stricken mother’s voice could be heard in the background.
“You come over quickly, as soon as you can,” was the reply.
The third and final call was the one which pronounced the death of the victim, albeit with a twist.
“Yes, please listen… we were repeatedly telling you before… your daughter… may have… died by suicide… or, she may have passed away. The police are here. All of us from the hospital are here. We are calling you to ask you to come down quickly,” the apparently same voice from the first two calls announced in disjointed sentences.
The final call lasted for 28 seconds.
The clear changes in the hospital’s statement, from the victim “falling a little ill” to “very critical and admitted in emergency ward” to, finally, “may have died by suicide” have left the investigators to question whether “a carefully planned suicide plot was being hatched by the hospital authorities and police to cover up the crime”, an official said.
“Especially since the caller admitted in her final call, while misleading the family on the cause of the victim’s death, that she was speaking in the presence of police and hospital authorities,” the official added.
It is relevant to mention that the first GD entry of the crime at Tallah PS which mentioned “unnatural death” was made much before the first call to the parents went from the hospital, the official said.
“How could the hospital management, fully aware of the gruesomeness of the crime, be so nonchalant and manipulative in breaking the news to the parents,” a student protestor asked.
Addressing reporters later in the day, DC (Central) Indira Mukherjee said the purported clips only vindicated police’s claim on who passed the “suicide” information to the parents.
“We have been saying all thorough that Kolkata Police never informed the parents that the victim died by suicide. These audio clips only confirm what we have been maintaining so far,” she said.
Responding to a controversy over whether the sheet to cover the victim’s body was changed, Mukherjee, referring to the seizures the police made from the scene of crime, said, “Our photography and videography sessions at the crime scene began at 12.25 pm on that day and the recordings took place in phases during inquest, forensic examination and post mortem. In all our records the colour of the sheet which covered the victim’s body was blue. It was seized and later handed over to the CBI.”
Mukherjee dismissed claims from the victim’s parents that the body was covered in a green sheet when they were allowed to see the deceased, a claim that led to fervent speculations on whether evidence was tampered.
“We have no evidence of any green sheet in our photo and video records. It was always blue,” the officer said.
Mukherjee, however, confirmed that the police had also seized a red coloured cloth from the crime scene which belonged to the victim and with which she covered herself before dozing off inside the hospital’s chest department seminar room that fateful night. (PTI)