A Murder Most Foul

Two Deputy Commissioners of Kolkata Police, Mr Gyanwant Singh and Mr Ajay Kumar, both IPS officers, and an Assistant Commissioner, Mr Sukanti Chakraborty, literally hounded Rizwanur Rahman to death.
From 1 to 8 September, they repeatedly summoned him and his wife, Priyanka Todi, to their Lalbazar headquarters and forced him, under threat of imminent arrest, to send her back to her father’s house That was on 8 September and that was also the last that Rizwan saw of his wife. And he himself was fated to die on 21 September.
The three police officers were clearly acting in excess of their jurisdiction. A case had not been registered anywhere against Rizwan, although some patently false information was filed by Ashok Todi, Priyanks’s father, at Lalbazar to the effect that Rizwan had abducted her. It was known to the police officers that they had legally married and, therefore, the police had no role to play in this matter, irrespective of the fact that the religious persuasion of the two parties was different.
Mr Prasun Mukherjee, Commissioner of Police, made the ex cathedra announcement at the Press conference called by him on 23 September that it was “transparently” a case of suicide. He was thereafter unable, or unwilling, to answer some pertinent questions about the “suicide”. He made his peremptory announcement, invoking an astute power of divination, at a time when he had not seen the postmortem report or the condition in which Rizwan’s body was found by the side of the rail tracks near Bidhannagar railway station.
To those uninitiated in the mysteries of the occult and given to logical and rational thinking, the theory of suicide was the least plausible, for Rizwan had vowed to fight the might of Ashok Todi and he had set out from home on the fateful day with the avowed purpose of meeting Mr Sujato Bhadra of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights and at about 10.12 a.m., he had rung up Mr Bhadra to reschedule his meeting with him to 2.30 p.m. and then go to Lalbazar and half an hour later his body was discovered between Bidhannagar and Dum Dum railway stations.
No crew of any train that passed the spot where his body lay has testified to the fact that he was hit by their train. The body was discovered facing upwards with hands folded across the chest. The skull was smashed, but, apart from this, it bore no other marks of injury and the clothes were not torn. These are circumstances that are inconsistent with the theory of suicide and point plainly to murder.
Assuming, but not admitting, that it was suicide, Rizwan was driven to it by the intervention of the police in his marital life culminating in the forcible removal of his wife to her father’s custody and at least three Kolkata Police officers, Mr Gyanwant Singh, Mr Ajay Kumar and Mr Sukanti Chakraborty, are guilty of abetting the offence. And they were all acting under the orders of Mr Prasun Mukherjee. Therefore, all four of them should face criminal proceedings for the abetment of suicide, apart from disciplinary proceedings for acting in excess of their lawful jurisdiction.
But if, as seems likely, it was a case of murder, was it committed by hired goons with the possible complicity of the police? The haste with which Mr Prasun Mukherjee chose to brand the crime as suicide without an iota of evidence, invoking his mysterious powers of divination, would suggest that he had a guilty suspicion that it was not and was keen to bury the truth. At whose behest? Mr Ashok Todi’s money or the party in power or both?
In this connection, it may be pertinent to bear in mind that the instinctive initial reaction of Mr Biman Bose of the CPI-M was to spring to the defence of the Police Commissioner and to justify his fatuous remarks at his famous Press conference.
Then there is the statement of Rizwan’s relatives to the effect that certain CPI-M leaders offered the family money to hush up the matter. It may also be pertinent to mention that for Mr Ashok Todi the death of Rizwan was a consummation devoutly to be wished, for that removed once for all the canker that was eating into his soul. Therefore, a thorough investigation by an impartial agency is needed to unravel the truth and to rescue it from the murky hands of Mr Prasun Mukherjee and his cohorts.
The decision of the state government to hand over the investigation of the Rizwan affair to the CID will assuage few minds that want a fair and an impartial inquiry to be conducted in order to unmask the culprits, including the abettors, if any. Already the CID inquiry is under suspicion that it is being manipulated from Writers’ Buildings with Mr Mukul Sengupta, the IG, stoically refusing to interrogate the two deputy commissioners, who have been the stars of the dramatis personae of this sordid drama on the ground that there is no evidence against them!!!
The suspicion cannot be avoided that the CID will prepare any report dictated by the powers that be based on preconceived notions. And predictably, according to the Home Secretary, the preliminary report of the CID exonerates the Kolkata Police officers of any wrong doing. A former police commissioner, Mr Tushar Talukdar, two former DGPs, Mr Arun Prakash Mukherji and Mr Amiya Kumar Samanta and a former Joint Director of the CBI, Mr Upendra Biswas, have categorically stated on television that the intervention of the Kolkata Police officers in the Rizwanur-Priyanka affair was wholly unwarranted and unlawful. Mr Talukdar said he was ashamed of the conduct of the Kolkata Police.
If justice is not merely to be done, but also seen to be done, and if the powers that be are not afraid of whatever truth is likely to be uncovered, the investigation should be handed over to the CBI, for the CID will not be able, or allowed, to ferret out the truth. Mr Subhas Chakraborty, state’s transport minister, is unequivocally of the same opinion.
The chief minister gives the impression that he also wants that justice must be seen to be done and with this end in view he has announced what he described as a “judicial” inquiry into the circumstances leading to Rizwan’s death. The inquiry is to be conducted by Mr Aloke Chakraborty, a retired judge of Calcutta High Court.
Through what process his name cropped up is not known. But the important fact is that he ceased to be a member of the judiciary the moment he retired from the High Court. Then how does the CM call the inquiry a “judicial inquiry”? A judicial inquiry, properly constituted, would require the state government to write to the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court requesting him to nominate a sitting judge of the High Court and to appoint that judge to conduct the inquiry. This process is designed to preserve the independence of the inquiry from any kind of interference.
Be that as it may, Mr Chakraborty’s inquiry will serve no purpose at all, apart from buying valuable time for government and obfuscating issues. In particular, it will not be able to bring the culprits to book. Public memory is proverbially short. Therefore, if the CM means business, he should scrap the proposed “judicial” inquiry and entrust the investigation to the CBI, the only impartial agency available in the circumstances.
While announcing the so-called “judicial inquiry”, the CM said that money power might have been involved in the Rizwan affair; and that there was also a communal dimension to it. He avoided saying that there was a political dimension also. Echoing the role of money power, Mr Kshiti Goswami, PWD minister, said that Mr Ashok Todi helped Mr Prasun Mukherjee in his CAB election campaign. And what about the communal approach of the Kolkata Police?
Public conscience has been touched to the quick by the murky goings-on in the police and there has been widespread resentment in all walks of civil society, cutting across all religious lines, at the sordid conduct of the police and the loss of an innocent life. That conscience demands an impartial inquiry to unravel the truth. The Commissioner of Police, owning at least moral responsibility for the high-handedness of two of his deputies and others and the resultant tragedy, should immediately resign from his post; and if he does not oblige, he should be relieved of his post; and the other officers named in this connection should face disciplinary proceedings and placed under suspension immediately and, if their complicity in abetment of suicide or murder is proved, then they should face criminal proceedings as well. The immediate removal of all four police officers from their posts, pending disciplinary and/or criminal proceedings, is the least that the government can do to bolster a sagging public confidence in the government’s will, or ability, to deliver justice.