By IANS,
Kolkata : The Calcutta High Court Wednesday rejected the bail plea of industrialist Ashok Todi, accused of playing a key role in abetting his son-in-law and graphics designer Rizwanur Rehman’s suicide last year.
Justice B.P. Sengupta said the charges brought against Todi by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) were too strong and hence the high court had decided to reject his bail application.
The hearing of Todi’s bail plea was postponed Friday after the division bench comprising Justice Amit Talukdar and Justice P.S. Banerjee differed on the issue. Later Sengupta was assigned to give the verdict Wednesday.
In another development Wednesday, all seven accused in the Rizwanur suicide case were produced at a city sessions court for a hearing in Rizwanur’s suicide case. Metropolitan Magistrate Madhumita Roy said the case would next be heard Dec 23.
The seven accused are Ashok Todi, his brother Pradeep Todi, brother-in-law Anil Saraogi, former Kolkata police deputy commissioner Ajoy Kumar, former assistant commissioner of police Sukanti Chakraborty, sub-inspector Krishnendu Das, and Rizwanur’s neighbour S.M. Moinuddin alias Pappu.
Ashok Todi is currently lodged in Presidency Jail in Alipore.
Rizwanur, a 30-year-old Muslim graphics designer working with a multimedia firm, was found dead Sep 21 last year near the railway tracks at Kolkata’s Patipukur suburb, barely a month after marrying Ashok Todi’s daughter Priyanka, a Hindu.
The case shocked the entire nation, which saw it as a Hindu-Muslim love story driven to a tragic end.