Life…is elsewhere, not here: Rizwanur Rehman

I have never turned to news and events in this blog, but the screaming headlines in todays newspaper forced me to change my habits. Ragpicker cannot restrain anger today.In my city, Rizwanur Rehman fell in love with a wealthy businessman’s daughter. Priyanka Todi was this not-so-affluent computer teacher’s student. Their relationship was not approved by Priyanka’s parents. Still they married under the Special Marriage Act (this goddamn state still categorises marriage between two consenting adults under religious heads; the Special Marriage Act clubs ’secular’ instances of marriage!). Apparently, Priyanka was happy in his ‘poor’ husband’s home.

But the parents weren’t. They accused Rizwanur of abduction, something which does not hold much ground. Then – now this is the most atrocious of all – this wealthy business-family used their political clout and their bonhomie with the Calcutta police to threaten the couple (timeline beneath) and forced Priyanka to return to her parents for indefinite period. The girl resisted; but when she was informed that her father has ’suffered a mild cardiac arrest’ she had to return.

Yesterday, his body was discovered, skull crushed, beside a railway track.

A riot-situation ensued in parts of my city, crowds accusing police of murdering the man, something which is debatable; but the police cannot deny that they have intruded – with tragic results – into a married couple’s life. It’s an instance of the state killing love.

Why did Priyanka’s parents disapprove of their daughter’s choice of life-partner? The issue of their disparate status, the rich-versus-poor, comes in. But how can this situation resist hinting this suspicion that a rich, upper-caste, conservative Hindu family was not willing for a Muslim son-in-law?

My heart bleeds for the couple: the dead man and the woman whose state of bereavement and process of mourning remains thoroughly disturbed. And I curse those uniformed suckers who can easily whore themselves to rich and fat businessmen and act as hired goons, well-payed and idle enough to intrude into the private life of a newly married. They considered themselves a Bush into Rizwanur’s Iraq.

Life…is elsewhere, not here.

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Following, major news clippings about the event from Sep 23, 2007 onwards

(if news sources are not mentioned, they are from The Telegraph, Calcutta, India.)

Dear Readers, this post remains the most visited one in the history of this blog (view: Visit Statistics of this post) and I have also decided to gather news on the Rizwanur Rehman case here, as a result the page was turning out to be interminably long. Fed with some large-sized images, it took time to load and became more cumbersome for me to edit. Therefore I have decided to organize the news in a more systematic way: though the overarching framework of the following is chronological, in some places it is broken to maintain a thematic unity of the news. Click the links below to visit the pages.

News Collection Contents

1 The Death and Aftermath
2 The CBI Inquiry Starts
3 The Todi Stories
4 The Inquiry Continues
5 The New York Times Report
6 Cop Corruption, Missing Bond, Snehashis Ganguly
7 Mourning and Rizwanur’s Grave
8 Priyanka’s Words
9 Cops and Money and Lies
10 New Twists in the Tale
11 Lies and Skletons in the Todi Closet
12 Priyanka’s Letters
13 Ex Cop-Chief faces the Music
14 ‘Abetment to commit suicide’ New!

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Visit International Campaign against Honour Killings

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