By IANS,
Kolkata : A murder case has been filed and the probe has been handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) after the body of a police officer, who investigated the mysterious death of Rizwanur Rehman in its early days, was found in West Bengal Wednesday, officials said Thursday.
Following allegations from the relatives of Arindam Manna, the second officer of the Government Railway Police (GRP) at Dum Dum, that he had been murdered, the state government handed over the case to the CID.
“A murder case has been registered by the GRP. We’ve also now started our probe. A three-member team from our department visited the Walsh hospital in Sreerampore today where the post-mortem was conducted Wednesday,” Additional Director General (ADG) CID Bhupinder Singh told IANS.
Following the furore over the recovery of the body, found next to railway tracks in Hooghly district, a second post-mortem examination was conducted at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital Thursday. The body was later handed over to his family around 1 p.m.
State Police Inspector General (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia said: “We will get the post-mortem reports within two days and will then be able to tell if it is a case of murder or suicide. For the time being, we have already started preliminary investigations.”
The CID team also visited the spot near the Mankundu railway station where Manna’s body was found with injury marks on legs, hands and eyes.
“We will examine everyone, talk to all concerned, including Manna’s family members,” Singh said.
A relative of the victim said there was enough evidence to prove that the officer was murdered.
“Generally when a person commits suicide he resorts to a particular means to take his life. But Arindam’s body bore multiple injuries. One of his hands was broken� how can a person who wants to commit suicide break his own hand? There were blood clots on his chest, bullet marks on his legs and his eyes were also wounded,” Manna’s sister-in-law Rima Sen said.
She said Manna had feared he could be murdered.
“For the past few days Manna was very depressed. Whenever we asked him the reason for this, he said some political leaders and his seniors at GRP were trying to pressurise him and they could harm him. He even said his phone was being tapped by police,” Sen said.
She, however, said Manna didn’t name anyone in particular.
City-based human rights activist Sujato Bhadra also said Manna was murdered.
“There are sufficient reasons to conclude that because of the Rizwanur murder case, Manna, who was an important witness, was murdered by police and the accused. We are on a fact-finding job. We will raise our voice against this crime,” Bhadra, chief of the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), told IANS.
Rizwanur, a 30-year-old graphic designer working with a multimedia firm, was found dead Sep 21, 2007 near the railway tracks at Kolkata’s Patipukur suburb, barely a month after his marriage with Hindu girl Priyanka, daughter of local industrialist Ashok Todi, who was firmly opposed to the match.
As a Hindu-Muslim love story gone horribly wrong, Rizwanur’s death had shocked the entire nation.
Todi, his brother Pradeep, brother-in-law Anil Saraogi and four city police officers – 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 – were subsequently accused of threatening and pressurising Rizwanur to annul his marriage with Priyanka and stay away from her.
All the seven accused were later arrested but are now on bail.