Day after suicide bid, Ghosh pleads: ‘arrest main culprits’

“The main culprits in the Saradha scam are still roaming free. Please see to it that the culprits are arrested,” Ghosh said while being pushed into a waiting police van. He, however, did not take any names.

Asked from where he got so many sleeping pills, Ghosh said, “It is more important to know who supplied me so many pills. The jail department should answer this question”.

Meanwhile, preliminary investigation by the jail department revealed that Ghosh had got the sleeping pills in his cell from the jail hospital. The hospital gives the medicines to the prisoners as per the prescription of the attending doctors. While the hospital manual says that a prisoner should be given the medicine as per the requirement for the day, Ghosh managed to get two strips of 10 pills each at a time.

While contacted, Minister for Correctional Home Department, Haider Aziz Safwi said, “The inquiry committee, headed by home secretary

Basudeb Banerjee, has started its work and is expected to submit its report next week.”

A city court, where a case against Ghosh is pending, has meanwhile sought a report from state IG (prison) and ADG (prison) explaining how Ghosh could make the suicide attempt in his cell at Presidency Correctional Home on Thursday night. Justice Aravind Mishra of City Sessions Court asked the report to be submitted on Monday after Ghosh’s counsel Ayan Chakraborty filed a petition before him during the day.

The petition stated that despite the suicide threat, which Ghosh had given in court during a hearing on November 10, the jail officials had failed to provide adequate security to him for which he was able to make the attempt.

The cells of Sudipta Sen and Debjani Mukherjee, main accused of the scam, were searched for medicines on Saturday. This was part of a major search in which all cells of four major correctional homes in the city – Presidency, Alipore Central, Alipore Central for Women and Dum Dum Central — were combed after Ghosh’s suicide attempt.