The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probing the ghastly rape and murder of a woman junior doctor of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, is trying to retrieve the deleted history of the mobile phone calls and messages which Ashish Pandey made on August 9, the morning of which the body of the victim was discovered at the seminar hall within the hospital premises.
Pandey is one of the confidants of Sandip Ghosh, the former and controversial principal of RG Kar.
Sources said the investigating officials have come across some circumstantial evidence that indicates that the history of such calls and messages from Pandey's mobile phone were deleted in due course.
The investigating officials believe that once the data on this count are retrieved it might lead to new angles in the twin conspiracies, the first related to tampering of evidence in the rape and murder case and the second related to the rampant financial irregularities at RG Kar.
Sources added that the investigating officials suspect that these deleted calls and messages were mainly related to a conversation between Pandey and his mentor Sandip Ghosh, against whom the central agency officials are conducting parallel probes in both the rape and murder as well the financial irregularities case.
In the rape and murder case, the main charges against Ghosh and the former SHO of Tala Police Station Abhijit Mondal are -- misleading the investigation and tempering of the evidence when the initial probe in the matter was being carried out by the Kolkata Police.
The name of Pandey first surfaced in the second week of September, when the CBI officials traced that he had put up at a hotel in Salt Lake on the night of August 9, on the morning of which the body of the doctor was discovered within the hospital premises.
On October 3, the CBI sleuths arrested Pandey in connection with the financial irregularities case. He is currently under judicial custody.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
