Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 13: In a reminiscent of the horrific rape and murder of a trainee post-graduate doctor in a West Bengal government-run hospital last year, the body of a 30-year old nurse has been found in a toilet locked from inside in the maternity ward of the government-run Nilratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on Wednesday night.
Police had to break down the locked door to retrieve the body. The deceased was identified as 30-year-old Rupali Burman. The toilet door had remained closed for an extended period, and when there was no response to repeated calls, staff alerted the police. Police forced the door open and recovered the body, which has since been sent for a post-mortem examination. The cause of death remained unclear, and the police are investigating the matter.
Joint CP Crime Kunal Agarwal, speaking about the death of the nurse, on Thursday said, “The matter came to light around 10:30 at night. She was a nurse in the gynaecology department of the hospital. The post-mortem of the body will be done today. The DD Homicide Department of Kolkata Police has already taken over the investigation. No suicide has been established so far. The forensic team is reaching soon. CCTV footage is also being investigated.”
In addition to the police investigation into the mysterious death of the NRS nurse, the health department has also started a separate investigation. An investigation committee has been formed, and the committee has been asked to submit a report to the health department within seven days.
The preliminary investigation suggested that the 30-year-old nurse was on duty on Wednesday night. Her shift began at 8 PM. After reporting for duty at the nursing station of the Gynaecology Department’s High Dependency Unit (HDU), she attended to a patient. She then went to the HDU restroom, where her body was later discovered.
There is a CCTV camera positioned outside the restroom. According to sources, the sequence of events was captured on the footage, which the police have already seized.
Police sources state that the nurse entered the restroom at 10:20 PM. When she did not return after some time, her colleagues began calling out to her at 10:27 PM. However, there was no response from inside, causing her colleagues to grow concerned. Eventually, the restroom door was forced open. Upon entering, her colleagues found her lying unconscious on the floor.
She was quickly placed on a trolley and examined, and her colleagues rushed her for medical attention. However, she died before any doctor could attend to her.
The West Bengal health minister Sharadwat Mukherjee and top police officers rushed to the hospital when the news broke. A police officer said the nurse was on duty on Wednesday night when she disappeared around 9:40pm. “While looking for her, the hospital staff found the door of a toilet locked for an unusually long time. They shouted her name, but there was no response. They broke the door and found her lying inside,” the officer said.
He added that some empty vials of anaesthetic injection and a syringe were found inside the toilet. “Doctors declared the nurse dead upon examination. No suicide note was found anywhere. The nurse’s phone has been seized to check the call records. Her husband has been asked to come here,” the officer said.
Police said the nurse was found dead on the first floor of the maternity ward at the 150-year-old hospital and that the zone was cordoned off. The hospital staff said the nurse got married in March to a man whose family lives in Delhi. The nurse’s family lives in East Midnapore district. The hospital staff said the nurse lived with her husband in a rented flat near Kolkata.
The incident of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital when the now-ousted Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government was in power in August last year had created a nation-wide uproar and had quickly taken a political turn.
The investigation was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at the behest of the Calcutta High Court and the person earlier arrested by the Kolkata police was also produced as the sole perpetrator of the crime. The court had also found him guilty and had sentenced him to life imprisonment till death. The new BP government in the state, however, has ordered a fresh probe into the incident as her parents and many others believed that the investigation into the episode was short-shifted during the TMC regime to protect some other big wigs involved in the crime.