The West Bengal government on Tuesday moved the Calcutta High Court seeking the death penalty for Sanjay Roy, a former civic police volunteer convicted for the rape and murder of a 31-year-old doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, reported Bar and Bench.

The Sealdah Civil and Criminal Court in the city found Roy guilty of the crime on Saturday. On Monday, Additional District and Sessions Judge Anirban Das sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Das refused to grant the death penalty to Roy, saying that the crime did not meet the “rarest of rare” criteria for capital punishment, reported Bar and Bench.

The “rarest of rare” doctrine is used in India to decide when to impose the death penalty in cases that are particularly brutal, heinous or depraved. The doctrine is often applied in cases of murder, rape and other serious crimes.

The 31-year-old trainee doctor was found dead on the premises of the state-run hospital on August 9. The incident had sparked protests across the country.

On Monday, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed dissatisfaction with the sentence awarded to Roy. “Case was forcibly taken from Kolkata Police, had it been with them, it would have ensured death sentence,” she said.

The case was initially investigated by the West Bengal Police and later handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation by the High Court.

Banerjee said that she was “shocked” to see that the court did not find that the case met the rarest of rare doctrine. “I am convinced that it is indeed a rarest of rare case which demands capital punishment,” she said on X. “How could the judgement come to the conclusion that it is not a rarest of rare case?!”

On Tuesday, Advocate General Kishor Datta, representing the Trinamool Congress government in the state, moved a division bench of the High Court headed by Justice Debangsu Basak seeking the death penalty for Roy, PTI reported.

The bench granted permission to the West Bengal government to file the petition.

The Central Bureau of Investigation and the victim’s family had also sought the death penalty for Roy.

After the incident came to light in August, the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front led protests for several weeks demanding the resignation of senior officials and an end to the “threat culture” in the state’s medical centres.

Roy was arrested by the Kolkata Police on August 10, the day after the body of the doctor was discovered in the hospital’s seminar room.

Three days later, the Calcutta High Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the matter.

The Sealdah Civil and Criminal Court held a daily trial after a chargesheet was filed in the matter on October 7. Roy told the court that he was not involved in the incident and claimed that he was innocent.

Following protests seeking justice for the trainee doctor, the West Bengal Police imposed prohibitory orders barring the assembly of a crowd outside the medical institute for several days.

On August 15, a mob of 5,000 to 7,000 persons broke into and vandalised the hospital premises. The protestors, including doctors, were attacked by the mob.

Healthcare services across West Bengal were impacted for several weeks as protesting doctors at state-run hospitals held a strike against the incident.

The Central Bureau of Investigation is separately looking into alleged tampering of evidence in the case, and alleged corruption at the medical facility. The persons accused in the case include the hospital’s former principal Sandip Ghosh and an ex-officer-in-charge of the Tala police station, among others.