The suspect, Sanjay Roy, was arrested the day after the young doctor’s bloodied body was discovered on 9 August in a room at RG Kar hospital, where she had gone to rest after a 36-hour shift.

The CBI charged Roy on the basis of interviews and CCTV footage, which appeared to show him entering the seminar room at about 4.30am and then emerging about 30 minutes later. The woman’s body was discovered hours later by a junior doctor, with her eyes, mouth and genitals bleeding. An autopsy revealed she had about 25 internal and external injuries as a result of the attack and had died by strangulation.

The outrage was compounded by allegations that senior hospital staff had tried to cover up the incident. The then head of the hospital, Sandip Ghosh, allegedly made the victim’s family wait several hours before allowing them to see her body and they were initially informed she had taken her own life. Ghosh was later arrested on charges of tampering with evidence.