Kolkata horror: Conflicting videos of bribery claim by victim’s parents surface online

Conflicting videos with regard to bribery charges by the parents of Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital victim have surfaced on social media. In one of the videos, the victim’s father purportedly claimed the police offered him money for hushing up the case.

Participating in a candlelight vigil called by junior doctors at the hospital on Wednesday, the victim's father said the Deputy Commissioner (North) of the Kolkata Police offered them money. “The police, from the very beginning, tried to hush up the case. We were not allowed to see the body and had to wait. Later, when the body was handed over to us, a senior police official offered us money, which we immediately declined,” he alleged.

However, later a new video surfaced in which the parents purportedly denied the bribery charge and called it false and politically motivated. The video was played in a press conference called by by state ministers Bratya Basu and Shashi Panja in Kolkata on Thursday. The two said because of the CBI’s reluctance to share update about its investigations into the case, rumours and unverified details were being posted on social media.

This was followed by a third video where the victim’s father was reportedly heard saying that they denied the bribery charge “under pressure”. The Tribune could not independently verify the authenticity of the videos.

Congress leader and WBPCC chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, however, backed the parents’ claim that they were offered money. “When I first visited their house on Saturday (August 31), the victim's father had told me that money was offered to him by the police. I told this to the media after coming out of the house,” Chowdhury told a TV news channel.

On Wednesday, the victim’s father also alleged he was under immense pressure from the police to cremate his daughter’s body at the earliest. “We wanted our daughter’s body to be preserved for some time. But we were not allowed and were instead forced to cremate the body in a hurry. Even the crematorium authorities did not accept any cremation fee from us,” said the victim’s father.