By Sujoy Dhar
Kolkata,(IANS) A frail mother’s voice pleading for justice from a rundown house in Kolkata’s Muslim ghetto Park Circus is singeing West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and has plunged the ruling communists into a crisis.
He has braved the protests of Singur and weathered the uprising and police atrocities in Nandigram, but Bhattacharya is finding it hard to cope with the controversy and public fury generated in the Rizwanur Rehman case.
“Beware the fury of a patient man”, read a poster outside the Calcutta High Court Tuesday as the judge inside termed as illegal an ongoing Criminal Investigation Department (CID) inquiry into the mysterious death of Muslim youth Rizwanur. The court ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the case, something Bhattacharya had been resisting and the victim’s family and human rights groups had been demanding since the clamour for justice in the case gathered momentum.
“Have faith in me,” Bhattacharya had said when he ruled out a CBI probe and instead handed over the case to the CID and ordered a judicial inquiry by a retired judge. But neither Rizwanur’s family nor the rights groups had faith in him and the CID probe. People of Rizwanur’s neighbourhood even booed a visiting State Women Commission (SWC) panel for acting unfairly.
“How can we have faith in the chief minister when the top police officials accused of intimidating Rizwanur to opt out of his marriage with Priyanka Todi were not removed from their posts despite clear evidence,” asked human rights activist Sujato Bhadra.
“This is a landmark judgement in the fight for democracy and social justice,” said Bhadra, whose organisation Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) was approached by Rizwanur before his death after policemen allegedly started harassing him for having married industrialist Ashok Todi’s daughter.
Rizwanur, a 30-year-old computer graphic designer, was found dead beside a railway track here with his head smashed on Sep 21, barely a month after marrying Hindu girl Priyanka, the daughter of Ashok Todi, who heads the multi-million-rupee Lux Cozi group.
In a stinging rebuke to the ruling government Tuesday, Justice Soumitra Pal said the investigation conducted by the CID was “illegal”.
While the verdict was being passed, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was in far away Raghunathpur in backward Purulia district to lay the foundation stone of a steel plant.
Soon after the verdict, celebrations broke out in Kolkata as it was a hard-won victory for Rizwanur’s family and others supporting them in their fight for justice.
“This is a victory for all of us – the media, the people of Bengal and everyone who supported us in our fight for justice,” said Rizwanur’s brother Rukbanur Rahman.
“I think the CBI probe will give us justice. My son was murdered and his killers must be punished,” said Rizwanur’s mother Kishwar Jahan.
Bhattacharya, who under public pressure was forced to visit Jahan’s run-down house at Tiljana Lane and faced black flags after Jahan refused to go and meet him, seems to be a lonely man now that his ruling Left Front partners are echoing the opposition.
“There was a public outcry over Rizwanur’s death and the verdict of the Calcutta High Court reflects the people’s demand,” Forward Bloc state secretary Ashok Ghosh said.
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader and state minister Nandogopal Bhattacharya was more vocal.
“We have been saying all along that an impartial inquiry cannot be possible with the police commissioner and other top officials accused in the case in their chairs,” Nandogopal Bhattacharya said.