The Supreme Court on October 15, 2026, granted bail to Sandip Ghosh, the former principal of RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata, in the CBI’s case about alleged financial irregularities and the manipulation of merit lists, LiveLaw reported. A bench of Justices M M Sundresh and Prasanna B Varale allowed his appeal against the Calcutta High Court’s order of February 23, 2026, which had refused bail. The court noted that Ghosh had been in custody for more than two years and that only seven of the 147 witnesses had been examined. The terms of the bail are to be set by the trial court. Ghosh was represented by Senior Advocate Siddharth Aggarwal, and the CBI by Additional Solicitor General Suryaprakash V Raju.
The case that bail was warranted rests on the length of custody and the pace of the trial. Ghosh had been held for more than two years, and the trial had examined only seven of 147 witnesses, which at that pace suggested a long wait, so continued detention before a verdict was hard to justify. Both the Special CBI Court, which rejected bail on January 7, 2025, and the Calcutta High Court, on February 23, 2026, had refused it, so the Supreme Court’s decision reflects its view that the principle that bail is the rule applies even in serious economic cases. The CBI registered the case on August 24, 2024, so the investigation itself is also more than two years old.
The case against treating the bail as a verdict on the merits is that the allegations are serious and unproven. The CBI’s chargesheet in Special Case No. 1 of 2025 invokes sections 120B, 409, 420, 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code, which cover criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery and use of forged documents, together with the Prevention of Corruption Act. The allegations include financial irregularities at the college and accommodating undeserving candidates by manipulating merit scores. A grant of bail does not decide whether those charges are true, and the trial court, which will set the conditions, can still impose restrictions. With 140 of 147 witnesses still to be examined, the case against Ghosh has yet to be tested in court.
The ruling matters for West Bengal and for the wider debate on pre-trial detention in corruption cases because it shows how the court weighs time in custody against the gravity of the charge. RG Kar is a hospital whose name is linked in the public mind to the 2024 protests by doctors, and any development in cases connected to it attracts attention. For other accused persons in long trials, the reasoning on the number of witnesses and the period of detention may be cited in support of their own pleas, and for the CBI it raises the question of how quickly its cases can be tried.
Ghosh is free on bail in the financial case after more than two years in custody. The charges remain to be proved, and the trial, with 140 witnesses still to be examined, will take time.
Image: RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata (file photo). Photo by Indrajit Das, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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