A court in Kolkata's Sealdah appointed Advocate Kabita Sarkar to represent Sanjoy Roy, the prime accused in the alleged rape and murder of a doctor in RG Kar Medical College Hospital on August 9. Advocate Sarkar, 52, was handed the responsibility after several lawyers refused to represent the 33-year-old Roy due to the brutal nature of the crime he allegedly committed.
Advocate Kabita Sarkar, who moved to the Sealdah court in 2023, has requested her senior Sourav Banerjee to accompany her during the case.
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A law graduate from Hooghly Mohsin College, Advocate Sarkar, started her career at Alipore court, reported Times Of India (TOI). She initially handled civil cases before focusing on criminal law as a SALSA lawyer since February 2023, a few months ahead of joining the Sealdah court, the report added.
The senior lawyer believes every individual should get a free and fair trial and is against the notion of pre-trial judgments irrespective of the accusations. A strong backer of the slogan "innocent until proven guilty," Sarkar believes in letting offenders reflect on their crimes.
Sanjay Roy, a civil volunteer of the Kolkata Police, is accused of raping and murdering a 31-year-old PG student at Kolkata's state-run RG Kar Medical College Hospital earlier this month. She was asleep inside a seminar hall on the fourth floor of a hospital building when allegedly attacked by Roy. Having trespassed into the medical college campus, his headset was reportedly damaged during the assault. Torn pieces of the device were recovered from the crime spot, which later was found paired to his mobile phone.
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CCTV footage showed Roy staring at the victim and four other doctors hours before the crime was committed. Kolkata Police had earlier said Sanjay Roy confessed to observing the victim at the chest medicine ward hours before the crime. Now, it appears that the CCTV evidence corroborated his claim. Earlier, a psychoanalytic profiling of the accused found him to have an "animal-like instinct", reports had said.
