Approach lower court for bail, Calcutta HC tells Sandip Ghosh

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Monday refused to hear the bail plea from R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital’s former Principal Sandip Ghosh in connection with the multi-crore financial irregularities case.

A single-judge bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh observed that the bail application will have to be made at the lower court where the matter is being heard.

Currently, the matter of financial irregularities at R.G. Kar is being heard at a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Kolkata.

Two central agencies, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), are running parallel probes in the financial irregularities case.

While the CBI’s probe is court-directed and court-monitored, the ED has made a suo motu entry in the matter by filing an enforcement case information report (ECIR) in the matter.

Meanwhile, CBI is also conducting a parallel probe against Ghosh in the matter of the ghastly rape and murder of a lady junior doctor of R.G. Kar in August this year.

In the financial irregularities case, the main charges against Ghosh are manipulation in the tendering process of R.G. Kar to award contracts or work-ordered to contractors of his confidence, getting the infrastructure-related work of the hospital done by private agencies against hefty commissions bypassing the state Public Works Department, smuggling of bio-medical wastes from the hospital and selling of organs of unidentified bodies coming to the hospital morgue for autopsy.

Besides Ghosh, four others including his confidant Ashish Pandey are currently in judicial custody in connection with the financial irregularities case. The CBI officials have got definite clues that Pandey acted as the principal middleman in the multi-channel money trail in the alleged scam.

IANS