Kolkata, Sep 23 (IANS): Trinamool Congress legislator Nirmal Ghosh on Monday appeared before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital rape and murder case.

He was summoned for interrogation by the CBI at its Salt Lake office in the northern outskirts of Kolkata.

Ghosh is the MLA from the Panihati Assembly constituency in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.

Incidentally, the ancestral residence of the R.G.Kar victim comes under Panihati where Ghosh is the ruling party MLA.

It is learnt that the CBI had issued the notice for interrogation to Ghosh on Monday morning asking the latter to come to the agency’s Salt Lake office at the earliest. Honouring the notice Ghosh arrived at the CBI office a little after 11 a.m.

Sources aware of the development said that it has come to the notice of the investigating officials that Ghosh had arrived at R.G. Kar on the morning of August 9 after the body of the victim was discovered at the seminar hall of the hospital.

It is learnt that being the local MLA Ghosh accompanied the members of the victim’s family to the hospital. That is why, sources said, the CBI officials have felt the necessity of recording his statements in the matter.

Sources said that Ghosh was also there at the Panihati crematorium at the time the body of the victim was cremated. The investigating officials have also secured some video footage of the Panihati crematorium at the time of cremation of the victim’s body.

Already questions have been raised on the unnecessary hurry with which the body of the victim was cremated and that too ignoring the plea of the parents to preserve the body for some time.

CBI officials too feel that had not the body been cremated in a hurry, a second post-mortem could have been possible, which could have been crucial for carrying out the investigation.