The Death and Aftermath
(if news sources are not mentioned, they are from The Telegraph, Calcutta, India.)
Rizwanur Rehman
Events Timeline
Calcutta, Sept. 22: Rizwanur Rehman filed an appeal with the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights two days before his mysterious death, the NGO said today.
He had alleged threats by his father-in-law, businessman Ashok Todi, as well as police ever since he got married against the Todi family’s wishes. The APDR claim was backed up by Rizwanur’s sister-in-law Zahida, who said she had taken a peek as the young man keyed the appeal in on his PC.
“He said he wanted to fight till the end and was confident he would bring his wife back home,” Zahida said. Here is part of what the appeal says:
Aug. 18, 2007: Rizwanur and Todi’s daughter marry at registrar Sipra Ghosh’s office.
Aug. 31: The girl leaves the Todi home in Salt Lake, moves into her husband’s home in Tiljala Lane. The couple inform the police commissioner, deputy commissioner (south), the North 24-Parganas superintendent and other officers of their marriage.
Aug. 31 evening: The girl calls Todi, tells him about her marriage. Todi and family members arrive at Rizwanur’s place and try in vain to persuade her to return. Todi calls Karaya police who, too, fail. “They left threatening my family members of arresting all of us,” Rizwanur writes.
Sept. 1: The couple are called to Lalbazar where Sukanta Chakraborty, assistant commissioner (anti-rowdy section), asks the girl to return to her father for a few days. She refuses.
Sept. 3: Some people arrive and tell Rizwanur’s brother Rukbanur and his uncles that “if my wife is not sent back to her parents, I would be kidnapped and murdered”.
Sept. 4: The couple are again summoned to Lalbazar. DC (headquarters) Gyanwant Singh speaks to the girl in the presence of her parents. She tells Singh her parents are mentally torturing her.
Sept. 7: The girl’s aunt comes to the Tiljala house and says Todi is in hospital. The girl refuses to go. Local MLA Jawed Khan arrives and advises the couple to visit Todi.
Sept. 8: The couple are summoned to Lalbazar, and go with Rizwanur’s brother and uncles. Detective chief Ajay Kumar gives them two options: “she must visit her parents for seven days”, else “I will be arrested on a complaint by her father on charges of abduction and stealing valuables and she will be handed over to her parents”.
They accept the first option. Kumar and Chakraborty assure Rizwanur the girl is his legal wife, and he can approach the law if she does not return after seven days. Her uncle Anil Saraogi writes on a plain white paper he is taking her to her parents’ place for seven days.
“We knew perhaps we will never meet again. (We) vowed that if we don’t meet again, we will take our lives.”
Sept. 8 night: Girl calls Rizwanur, says she is at her parents’ place.
Sept. 9: The girl calls him from another mobile, says they must wait for more than seven days as her father is going to Tirupati and other holy places. She says he would not be harmed. Rizwanur says he can wait as long as her parents want him to, provided they speak to him after seven days and take some concrete decisions. He agrees to wait without taking any legal action.
Sept. 11: The girl speaks to Rizwanur the last time, tells him Todi is checking up on him and wants details of his relationship with a college friend that ended in 2004. “Maybe my wife’s parents wanted to influence her that I do not have a good character.”
He had, however, told the girl everything about it. She asks him not to worry. He gives her the college friend’s phone number and address. She says they would meet on Sunday, September 16. “That was the last I heard from my wife….”
Sept. 15: Rizwanur tries in vain to get in touch with his wife and Todi.
Sept. 18: Sadique Hossain, a marriage witness, gets a call apparently from Lalbazar saying he would be physically harmed for “forcing (my wife) into this marriage”.
The Telegraph contacted the commissioner and some of those named in the appeal. Their reactions:
Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee: “We shall inquire into all the allegations.”
Gyanwant: “A well-wisher of the Rehman family brought the couple to me. I spoke to the girl and found out she wanted to stay with her husband. Then they left.”
Kumar: “I merely told Rizwanur a case of kidnapping had been filed against him and he could face arrest unless his wife returned home.
Rizwanur
Death after in-law threats
Calcutta, Sept. 21: A youth who married the daughter of a prominent businessman against her parents’ wishes was found dead beside the railway tracks between Dum Dum and Bidhannagar Road.
The body of 22-year-old Rizwanur Rehman, an English honours graduate from a well-known missionary college in south Calcutta, was covered with injury marks and his head was smashed.
A case filed by railway police said Rizwanur appeared to have been hit by a train. The post-mortem is scheduled tomorrow.
Rizwanur’s family alleged that the youth had been threatened by his in-laws since his wedding in August and repeatedly asked to divorce his wife. The family had not filed a police complaint on Rizwanur’s death till late tonight.
“My brother was also threatened several times by personnel from Karaya police station and senior police officials from Lalbazar. We suspect that there is some foul play in my brother’s death,” said Rukbanur, Rizwanur’s elder brother, at the Tiljala Lane house of the Rehmans.
Others said two IPS officers had threatened to trump up charges against the youth if he refused to opt for divorce.
According to the police, the girl’s parents had approached them to lodge a complaint of kidnapping against Rizwanur after the couple got married. “But we did not register any case because both were consenting adults and had got married legally,” said an officer of the Karaya police station.
Rizwanur had recently started a computer business. “On September 9, the girl’s parents managed to persuade her to go home with them for a few days, saying that she could return soon,” the officer said.
However, before this, Rizwanur had sought an NGO’s help. The NGO, the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights, had advised him to contact the state human rights commission.
APDR secretary Sujato Bhadra said the youth was supposed to accompany him to Lalbazar this afternoon. Bhadra spoke to Rizwanur at 10.10am over cellphone. At 10.45, the young man’s body was found.
Efforts to get in touch with the girl’s family in Salt Lake did not yield any result.
Missing body buzz turns mob on cops
Calcutta, Sept. 22: A rumour that police had “done away with” the body of a young man, found dead near railway tracks after accusing top officers and his rich in-laws of threatening him, provoked a mob attack on police and cars in Park Circus this afternoon.
Hours earlier, Rizwanur Rehman’s family and the local citizens’ committee in Tiljala had filed separate complaints with Karaya police demanding a probe into the “role” of his father-in-law, businessman Ashok Todi, in the mysterious death.
Rizwanur, 22, was found between the Dum Dum and Bidhannagar Road stations yesterday, body covered with injuries and head smashed, a month after marrying Todi’s daughter against her family’s wishes.
The youth had accused Lalbazar of pressuring his wife to return to her father and threatening to arrest Rizwanur for kidnapping if she didn’t, according to his family and an NGO whose help he had sought.
According to the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights, Rizwanur’s complaint says the assistant commissioner (anti-rowdy section), Sukanta Chakraborty, and the deputy commissioner (headquarters), Gyanwant Singh, had tried persuasion.
Later, city detective chief Ajay Kumar issued the arrest threat on September 8, prompting the girl to go back “for seven days” to Todi’s Salt Lake home, from where she never returned.
Rizwanur’s sister-in-law Zahida backed this, saying: “I saw him prepare the complaint on his computer over two nights and took a peek. It matched what the APDR says.”
Todi could not be contacted. A spokesman for his company, Lux Hosiery Industries, said: “The entire family often goes out of town for about two weeks.”
The railway police, who claimed Rizwanur was knocked down by a Sealdah-Burdwan local, said the driver would be asked if the victim was alive when he was hit.
Tiljala, simmering since yesterday, erupted around 12.30pm today amid a rumour that the body was missing from the NRS morgue, where it had been taken for the post-mortem.
“Our relatives went to the morgue but couldn’t find the body,” said Rizwanur’s elder brother Rukbanur. “We never asked anyone to create trouble.”
A mob of 1,500 from Tiljala, Rifle Range Road, Beniapukur and Park Circus blocked the approach to No. 4 Bridge, stoned stationary cars and buses and torched a police jeep. Two senior officers were seriously injured in the stoning.
The blockade was cleared around 3.30pm by RAF and armed police.
Todi reaction ‘natural’, top cop says and storms out
Calcutta, Sept. 23: Calcutta police are literally on the run over Rizwanur Rahman’s mysterious death that is snowballing into a political issue with sensitive overtones.
Police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee today stormed out of a media conference, unable to answer questions about his force’s interference in the marital life of Rizwanur (30) and Priyanka Todi (23).
“I do not have time to answer all your questions,” Mukherjee told the media conference he had convened to respond to charges that officers colluded with a businessman to break up the marriage.
Before Mukherjee left in a huff, he declared that Rizwanur committed suicide, though the post-mortem report has not yet been made public.
The body of Rizwanur, a computer graphics teacher who married businessman Ashok Todi’s daughter against her family’s wishes, was found by the rail tracks on Friday.
Mukherjee described the reaction of the Todi family as “natural”. Like his deputies who are being dubbed self-styled marriage counsellors, the police chief displayed his expertise in such matters, almost questioning the desirability of relationships in which “financial and social status” do not match.
CPM state secretary Biman Bose tried to defend the police, saying they had no knowledge that the couple had a registered marriage. But documents suggest otherwise ( ). Sources said the chief minister was likely to call a meeting of officials tomorrow.
A political storm appears to be brewing with Mamata Banerjee, who is trying to live down her association with the BJP, calling on Rizwanur’s family. Siddiqullah Chowdhury, the Jamait Ulema-i-Hind leader who made capital out of the Nandigram flare-up, too, visited the house.
At the media conference, the police chief said: “Rizwanur’s death is a case of suicide and it is very transparent.”
“After taking care of the daughter for 23 years, if the family finds one morning that she has left them to start a new life with an unknown youth, parents cannot accept it. The reaction of the Todi family was natural,” Mukherjee said.
“The Todi family reacted because Rizwanur’s social and financial status did not match theirs,” explained Mukherjee, flanked by senior officers Gyanwant Singh and Ajoy Kumar.
According to Rizwanur’s family, Singh, Kumar and another officer (ACP Sukanta Chakraborty) were pressuring him to send his wife back to her parents. Rizwanur had mentioned in a statement that he and his wife were summoned to Lalbazar — the police headquarters — thrice in less than two weeks.
Asked whether the police should have got themselves involved, Mukherjee lost his composure. “Then who will get involved? Do you think the PWD will intervene? This is how we deal with such cases.”
As other questions began to fly, Mukherjee said he had time for only three as he had an appointment. The conference lasted 12 minutes.
The last question: “Had the police handled the case professionally, wouldn’t Rizwanur be alive now?”
Answer: “That is your problem.”
Holes in Biman’s defence of police
Rizwanur’s colleagues and students seeking justice
Calcutta, Sept. 23: State CPM [Communist Party of India (Marxist), the largest party in the Left Front which is ruling the State Govt. of West Bengal for the last 30 years - Life's Elsewhere] secretary Biman Bose today defended police saying they did not know Rizwanur Rah-man was legally married to Priyanka Todi.
But Rizwanur’s family and the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights said they had the police’s acknowledgement of receiving the information.
The young man, found dead off railway tracks, left behind allegations of senior police officers colluding with his businessman father-in-law to break up his marriage.
“I have learnt that neither the police nor the family (Todis) knew that they had a registry marriage. I don’t understand why questions are being raised about police intervention,” Bose said this afternoon. “The police should probe the whole incident, including how the boy died,” he added.
Rizwanur’s relatives will go to the CPM headquarters tomorrow to meet Bose.
The computer graphics teacher who lived at Tiljala had written to the civil rights organisation: “We submitted letter of information of our marriage at the office of the commissioner of police, DC south div- ision, OC-Karaya police station, OC-Entally police station, OC-Bidhannagar police station and SP North 24-Parganas. The stamped received copies of all these letters are attached.”
All the officers, including the police chief, sent their acknowledgements by August 31. Deputy commissioner (headquarters) Gyanwant Singh admitted receiving the letter “regarding information about your marriage registration” in a missive dated September 5.
The couple had enclosed copies of their marriage registration and birth certificates in their letter. “This is for your information that we got married under the special marriage act at the office of the marriage officer Shipra Ghosh on 18 August, 2007. The copy of our marriage certificate is being enclosed…. The marriage was performed with our own wish and not under the influence of any external pressure.”
Apprehending trouble, they wrote: “We are presuming that our father-in-law/father, Ashok Kumar Todi, may threaten us with dire consequences or create pressure or can send anti-socials or goondas to kidnap us. In view of this, we hope to get protection from your end, if required.”
Priyanka prefixed “Mrs” to her signature on the letter.
According to a CPM minister from the minority community, the police commissioner had claimed in a report to the chief minister that his force had no idea that the couple were legally wedded.
The police intervened after receiving complaints from Todi and the girl herself agreed to see her ailing father. The report apparently concluded that as the girl did not return, the heart-broken Rizwanur committed suicide.
“This police version is tot-ally at variance with the facts that our party has gathered,” the minister said.
