RG Kar corruption case: CBI gets Trinamool leader Ashish Pandey's 3-day custody

Kolkata: A Kolkata court on Friday remanded Trinamool Congress leader Ashish Pandey to three-day CBI custody in connection with the R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital financial irregularities case.

Pandey, also the house staff attached to state-run R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials on Thursday evening.

On Friday afternoon, the CBI officials produced Pandey, a close confidant of the former principal of R.G. Kar, Sandip Ghosh, before the special court.

At the court, the counsel for the Central agency sought Pandey's CBI custody for further interrogation.

The CBI counsel argued that since Pandey was an integral part of the group involved in carrying out financial irregularities at R.G. Kar, his further interrogation would reveal more important information about the scam.

On Friday, CBI informed the special court that both senior and junior doctors of R.G. Kar were victims of Pandey's "threat culture".

Pandey allegedly often used to threaten the doctors that he would transfer them to remote places if they objected to his "wrongful activities" in the hospital

Pandey has also been accused of taking bribes to arrange house-staff assignments for junior doctors, the CBI counsel informed the court.

The name of Pandey first surfaced in the second week of September, when the CBI officials traced that he had been putting up at a hotel in Salt Lake since August 9, the day when the body of a junior doctor of R. G. Kar, who became a victim of the ghastly rape and murder, was discovered at the seminar hall within the hospital complex.

Pandey is the fifth arrest made by CBI in connection with the financial irregularities at R.G Kar.

Earlier, in September, Ghosh and three others were arrested in the same case.

The other three arrests made in this connection were Afsar Ali, Suman Hazra and Biplab Sinha. While Ali is the personal bodyguard of Ghosh, Sinha and Hazra are vendors supplying medical equipment to R. G. Kar when Ghosh was at the helm of affairs.