CBI veterans who handled Hathras, Unnao take charge of Kolkata rape-murder case

The overall charge has been shouldered upon Sampat Meena, a 1994 batch IPS officer from Jharkhand, who handled the Hathras rape and murder case as well as the Unnao rape case.

With her is Officer Seema Pahuja, who was also part of the Hathras investigation team.

Meena, an Additional Director, is now in charge of a team of 25 officers and will work in a supervisory capacity.

The ground-level investigation will be carried out by Pahuja, who achieved a conviction in what was till then regarded as a blind case of the rape and murder of a Class 10 student in Himachal Pradesh.

The Gudiya case of 2017 triggered a clamour in the hill state then. The teen went missing while returning from school -- the path went through a dense forest track where she was abducted.

Her body was found two days later. She had been raped and strangled.

Anil Kumar, a woodcutter, was found guilty and sentenced to sentenced to life imprisonment in 2021.

In April 2018, the CBI revealed how it cracked the case -- using advanced DNA technology of percentage and lineage matching. After questioning over 1000 locals, they finally tested the DNA of over 250 people and found a match to forensic samples in the father of the accused. The son, who was out on bail and on the run, was later traced.

In the 2017 Unnao rape case too, the team had secured a conviction. BJP leader and local MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar -- who was later expelled from the party -- was given a life term in jail for the gangrape of a 17-year-old Dalit girl. 

He was also found guilty of the death of the girl's father in judicial custody, for which he is serving a 10-year jail term.

In the 2020 Hathras case, which also generated headlines across the country, sparking massive public outrage, a 19-year-old girl was allegedly assaulted and gang-raped by four men of the so-called upper caste. A fortnight later, she succumbed to her injuries in Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital.

What added to the public outrage was that her body was cremated by the Uttar Pradesh Police and the administration allegedly without the consent or the presence of her family.

Three of the four accused in the case have walked free. The fourth, Sandeep Thakur, has been convicted for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and not of rape or murder.

What is the RG Kar case?

A trainee doctor on the night of Aug 9 was raped and murdered at the seminar hall of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, which is located in North Kolkata's Belgachia area.

One person, a civic volunteer, has been arrested in connection with the case but protesting students as well as the victim's parents suspect more people are involved in the case.

The Calcutta High Court earlier this week slammed the Kolkata Police over its actions in the case and handed over the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation under judicial monitoring.

However, a massive night vigil across West Bengal where people without political flags participated changed the game and unnerved the ruling regime of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.