CBI questions doctor over Anubrata check-up : Adhikari had prescribed 14 days of 'bed rest' to Mondal

Adhikari had prescribed 14 days of 'bed rest' to Mondal

Chandranath Adhikari at a news conference in Santiniketan on Friday. : Amarnath Dutta

Kinsuk Basu And Snehamoy Chakraborty   |   TT  |  Calcutta   |   13.08.22 :  Chandranath Adhikari, the government doctor who had visited Anubrata Mondal at his house on Tuesday for a health check-up, has told the CBI that he turned up under instructions from his superiors at the Bolpur subdivisional hospital including the superintendent, sources in the central investigating agency said. 

The CBI had zeroed in on Adhikari, a surgeon, within hours of the news reaching the investigating team late on Tuesday night that he had visited Mondal, the Birbhum district president of the Trinamul Congress.

 On Thursday, while a team was questioning Mondal, another was interrogating Adhikari at his residence. The interrogation continued for over three hours and Adhikari’s statements were recorded, CBI officials said. 

“We would like to question everyone who had come together to suggest ‘bed rest’ to Mondal. The next would be the superintendent of the hospital,” said a senior CBI official. Sources in the agency said they were keen on questioning medical officers of Birbhum for two reasons.

These include:

•  Whether the decision to send a doctor to Mondal’s house was a part of a strategy that had the support of higher-ups in the health department and if so, who had given the instructions under whose orders.
• The visit of a team from a subdivisional hospital to the house of an accused in Bolpur was an indication of the clout that Mondal enjoyed in the Birbhum district and hence, it was necessary to record what doctors had to say about the visit. Adhikari had prescribed 14 days of “bed rest” to Mondal.

 “The CBI wanted to know about my visit in detail. I told them about the superintendent of the hospital instructing me over the phone to prescribe bed rest to Mondal,” Adhikari said at a news conference on Friday evening. 

“The officers also collected call recordings between the superintendent and me. I am prepared to go anywhere in the country, including Calcutta, if the CBI wants me to,” he added. Adhikari said he had been asked by his superintendent Buddhadeb Murmu over the phone to lead a medical team to Mondal’s house on Tuesday morning. According to the doctor, Murmu had apparently forced him to move to Mondal’s house even though he objected to it multiple times. The surgeon asked the superintendent for the letterhead of the government hospital to prescribe him medication and other instructions.

“The hospital superintendent had asked me to prescribe everything on a piece of white paper. I followed his instruction,” he said. Although the doctor primarily admitted that he had prescribed bed rest for Mondal as he thought it was required on Tuesday morning, he later at night claimed that he had to prescribe bed rest according to the “request” of Mondal.

Asked whether it was a threat or force that had made him prescribe bed rest for Mondal, he claimed “request” from such an influential person was enough. The surgeon on Friday evening said he was feeling insecure as he had apparently commented against Mondal. “What I said in public through various media outlets somehow went against him (Mondal). So, I feel insecure apprehending consequences,” he said. The superintendent of the Bolpur subdivisional hospital, Buddhadeb Murmu, had been on leave till Thursday. Hospital sources said he did not join his duty even on Friday apparently because of the controversy that was raised by Adhikari over his visit to the residence of Mondal.