Calcutta high court forms SIT to probe into IIT Kharagpur student death case

The Calcutta high court on Wednesday set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe into the death of an IIT Kharagpur student and allowed narco-analysis test of the suspects.

“The Calcutta high court has formed a SIT headed by K Jayaraman (a senior IPS officer) and allowed narco-analysis test of the suspects. The police have been asked to hand over all papers to the SIT,” said Ranajeet Chatterjee, high court advocate representing the deceased student’s parents.

The third-year mechanical engineering student of IIT Kharagpur was found dead in the hostel on October 14, 2022.

The 23-year-old had last spoken with his family members on the night of October 11.

Also Read:‘Justice will be served’: IIT-Kharagpur student’s kin on HC order to add murder charge

The police and IIT authorities had initially suggested that the student may have died by suicide to which his parents opposed alleging that their son was murdered.

They had moved the Calcutta high court last year seeking formation of an SIT to probe the death.

Even though the first autopsy and police reports failed to conclude how the student died, a second postmortem done by Dr Ajoy Kumar Gupta, a retired forensic expert, on the orders of the Calcutta HC claimed that death was caused due to profuse bleeding causing hemorrhagic shock and combined effect infused over chest and over the student’s head.

The court had ordered a second postmortem after exhuming his body from his grave at Dibrugarh in Assam.

“There is a possibility that he was hit with a blunt object or a blunt pointed object or a pointed sharp object. It could be a dagger or some pointed object like a sharp metal rod, which had entered his body (around the head and neck region) from right to left. As an autopsy surgeon, my job is to scan the body, inch by inch,” Gupta had told HT.

Gupta in his preliminary findings had even pointed out two injury marks, medically called Haematoma, on the victim’s head.

“There are serious questions that are required to be addressed by the police and the investigating officer. The matter now becomes an investigation into a likely homicidal murder,” a bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha had stated on June 6 after going through the second autopsy report.

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