Two RG Kar Hospital Staff Members Arrested On Extortion Charges

Two autopsy assistants of state-run RG Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata were arrested on Monday on charges of illegally extorting money from the relatives of the victims of unnatural deaths whose bodies came to the hospital morgue for a post-mortem examination.

This came to light as the two autopsy assistants - identified as Shambhu Mallick and Santosh Mallick - had a severe fight between them within the hospital premises a few days back.

Sources said that the cops of Tala Police Station started an investigation into the matter and came to the reason for the fight was the quarrel between the two autopsy assistants over the share of the extorted money.

Meanwhile, RG Kar insiders said that in the past, several complaints had piled up with the hospital authorities against these two autopsy assistants accusing them of extorting money.

"However, the hospital authorities have ignored all the complaints for a long time. The matter would not have come to such a stage had there not been the clash between the two, following which normal post-mortem process at the morgue was halted for quite some time," said an RG Kar insider who did not wish to be named.

One of the important charges in the financial irregularities case at RG Kar on which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is carrying out an investigation is the illegal sale of organs, harvested from unidentified bodies coming to the hospital morgue for post-mortem, in the market at lucrative prices.

The charges are also there that this racket was run by the former and controversial Principal Sandip Ghosh in association with a section of the autopsy assistants. In fact, the junior doctors attached to RG Kar and had been protesting against the ghastly rape and murder of a junior doctor of the hospital had also alleged earlier that Ghosh used to have a share of the money extorted from the relatives of the victims of unnatural deaths whose bodies came to the hospital morgue for the purpose of post-mortem.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)