Rampurhat doctor was murdered: Kin

KOLKATA: The family and colleagues of Dr Kaliprasad Adhikari, who was found dead at a diagnostic centre in Rampurhat last Saturday, have demanded a detailed probe. While police claim that prima facie it seems to be suicide, there are way too many inconsistencies, point out his family and friends.
In fact, the case is eerily similar to the murder of Dr Sushil Pal in 2004.Like Pal, Adhikari, an assistant professor at Calcutta National Medical College (CNMC), was a promising gynaecologist. Pal’s death had also been dubbed as suicide initially.
Adhikari was only 32. Son of a retired primary schoolteacher from Gopalnagar close to Rampurhat, he would go there every weekend to attend to patients as his father wished that he’d never forget his rural connection.
Last Saturday, he went to Rampurhat as usual. After a couple of surgeries in Rampurhat and four in Nalhati, he went to Bamdev Polyclinic to spend the night — a usual practice for him if it got too late to go to his village. Around 11pm, owners of the polyclinic, Shiekh Shamsuddin and Abdul Matin, informed Rampurhat police that Adhiraki had been found hanging from the shower in the clinic’s first-floor bathroom.
“My husband had called me around 9pm and said he was feeling slightly unwell. As I was feeding my little daughter, I told him that I would call him back. But when I rang him repeatedly, he did not take the calls,” said wife Sharmistha Upadhyay.
Finally, someone took the call. He did not identify himself but reportedly told her that Adhikari was unwell and was being taken to hospital. Sharmistha, who was at her parent’s house in Malda, reached Rampurhat Subdivisional Hospital the next morning, only to be told that Adhikari had killed himself.
“There was no reason for him to commit suicide. There were injury marks on his forehead and right eye. He was murdered,” she alleged on Friday.
That night, Prasenjit Das, a youth from Adhikari’s village on whose sister the doctor had conducted a hysterectomy, had stayed back at the polyclinic. A little after 10pm, when Das was getting ready for bed on the ground floor, the owners rushed down to tell him that Adhikari had committed suicide.
“Das saw the clinic owners open the bathroom door that was locked from outside. They took the body down. Why did they have to do this before informing the police,” alleged Dr Rimpa Banerjee, a former colleague of Adhikari at CNMC.
The authorities at CNMC and Adhikari’s alma mater Burdwan Medical College wanted the autopsy to be conducted at either of the two hospitals. “But it was done at Rampurhat Subdivisional Hospital that does not even have a forensic expert. What was the hurry?” pointed out S R Ali, an intern at CNMC.
A six-member team of doctors and interns visited Rampurhat on Sunday. The team came up with many loose ends that question the police’s claim of suicide (see box).
On Friday, doctors, students and staff members of CMNC held a candle-light march demanding a thorough probe into the death. It was attended by Dr Sushil Pal’s wife Kanika and Trinamool Congress leader Nirmal Majhi, who is also the president of West Bengal Medical Council and the state IMA. Majhi has promised to take the matter up with the government.