Cops mum over hospital mystery death

KOLKATA: More than three weeks after his 28-year-old sister Savitri died under mysterious circumstances at an elite city nursing home, Shiv Dayal Pandey, a private tutor from Bihar, is still waiting for the post mortem report telling him what or who caused his sister''s death.
Pandey alleges the Alipore police forced him to write he had "no complaints" as a pre-requisite for releasing the body.And now, he says, the same officers are trying to hush up the case.
Savitri was married to Shashi Bhushan Sinha in 1993 and lived with her in-laws in the tenth floor quarter of the medical centre-cum hospital. In his FIR, Pandey accuses Savitri''s husband and in-laws Mina and Ram Naresh of regularly torturing her. Ram Naresh, incidentally, is an employee of the same hospital.
"She often complained of cruelty and harassment. She was not given proper food and medicine and sometimes turned out of the house," Pandey alleged in his letter to the OC of Alipore PS, on March 21.
His nephew Shailendra Pandey recalls receiving a phone call from Ram Naresh on the morning of March 15, informing him that Savitri''s condition was serious. "I rushed to the hospital only to be told that she had expired the previous night," he told TNN.
"We believe her death was unnatural. My sister was not happy as her husband wanted to marry again in the hope that it would bring him more money," Shiv Dayal said. The hospital sources meanwhile, confirmed that Ram Naresh had been suspended. The doctor who attended Savitri too had refused to issue a "natural death" certificate.
However, with the Alipore PS and investigating officer Bimal Dey still not handing over the post mortem report, Pandey fears the culprits may go free. "Obviously the Sinhas are trying to buy their way out. I am an outsider and a poor man. My only hope is that the city''s police will live upto its reputation of being honest and sincere," he says.
An officer at Alipore PS said, "The post mortem report has not come in. We cannot take any steps unless we receive the report. The law cannot act without evidence".