RG Kar Medical College MBBS student found dead, doctor arrested over alleged poisoning

Kolkata: In a tragic incident, a final year MBBS student at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, died under mysterious circumstances while undergoing treatment at Malda Medical College and Hospital. Her fiancé, a junior doctor at Malda Medical College and Hospital, has been arrested in connection with her death.

He has been remanded to six days’ police custody after being accused of poisoning the student, which allegedly led to her falling ill.

The accused doctor is the fiancé of the deceased, as the two had secretly married at a temple in Odisha nearly four months ago. However, the deceased wanted to make the marriage public and insisted on a court marriage, but the accused was unwilling to do so.

According to family members, the two had been in a relationship for eight months. The deceased had even become pregnant and later underwent an abortion at a nursing home in Kolkata. Following this, the accused allegedly called her to Malda, where she was later admitted with a drug overdose.

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The initial investigation says that the cause of death was an overdose of a particular drug - paracetamol. But the real reason behind the death whether suicide or murder attempt could be ascertained only after the detailed post-mortem and viscera reports are available, reports The Telegraph.

While the death remains shrouded in mystery, the victim’s parents on Saturday alleged that their daughter’s death was unnatural. Her mother accused the fiancé of being responsible, claiming he wanted to avoid marriage despite being in an intimate relationship with her daughter. She subsequently lodged an FIR against him.

In her complaint, she alleged that the accused doctor had poisoned her daughter because she was insisting on official marriage registration, which he had been avoiding. “When we saw her at the hospital CCU, she was frothing from her mouth,” Tudu claimed.

She further alleged that the two had gone to Puri recently, where they got married secretly at a temple. However, he later backed out of registering the marriage formally, leading to frequent arguments.

“As he backed out from the promise later on, this resulted in frequent tiffs and altercations, and my daughter had been under a lot of pressure,” Tudu alleged.

"Recently, my daughter became pregnant, and I advised her and her fiancee to get married. My daughter agreed. But her fiancee was trying to avoid that. Rather, he forced my daughter to have an abortion. This created a distance between the two," the victim's mother claimed on Saturday afternoon.

Around four days ago, the victim's mother claimed, her daughter went to Malda to settle things out with her fiancee, and she also rented a hotel room at Malda town.

The grief-stricken mother told PTI, “Yesterday, we got a phone call from him that our daughter had fallen seriously ill and was taken to Malda hospital. Today we were informed that she died. We know she was asking him to marry her. Our daughter visited our Balurghat residence last Sunday and left for Kolkata the next day. How come she landed up in Malda subsequently and fell ill? We want police to interrogate him. My daughter had been murdered, and her fiancee probably fed her something poisonous. My daughter cannot commit suicide. We want the strictest punishment for him," the victim's mother said.

Officials said the doctor who was picked up by a Malda police team from his rented house in Englishbazar town, Malda after he was found absconding. He was interrogated and was later remanded to six days’ police custody by a local court. He will be again produced before the magistrate on September 20.

Expressing solidarity with the bereaved family, West Bengal Junior Doctor Front leader and RG Kar postgraduate trainee Aniket Mahato said, “We extend condolences to the family and demand a speedy, fair investigation into the case. Whoever is responsible for the death of our sister-friend from RG Kar must be identified and punished. The allegations made by her mother should be investigated with utmost seriousness.”

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