Workers carry the body of Faizan Ahmed, the Assam student who was allegedly killed in IIT Kharagpur, after West Bengal police personnel exhume it from the Amollapatty graveyard, in Dibrugarh, on May 23, 2023.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Rehana Ahmed, mother of Faizan Ahmed, a mechanical engineering student from IIT Kharagpur who died last October, said she is relieved to hear that her son did not take his life.
The family, in November last year, moved the court alleging that 23-year-old Faizan had been killed because of his refusal to participate in ragging. The police had claimed that the third-year student had died by suicide with a precipitating factor of his not getting an internship.
On June 6, Justice Rajasekhar Mantha of the Calcutta High Court referred to the second post-mortem report and said the matter now becomes an investigation into a likely murder.
The report said Faizan’s death had been “due to profuse bleeding causing haemorrhagic shock” with the ante-mortem injuries being “homicidal in nature”.
Orders probe
Justice Mantha, in his order, said the court was “surprised that doctors who did the first post-mortem missed out on the vital and important aspect of the body of the deceased… The Director of the CFSL [Central Forensic Science Laboratory] shall cause an enquiry into the circumstances under which the omission occurred,” the court said.
Ms. Ahmed has been waiting in Kolkata for the past several days to return to Dibrugarh with the body of her son, exhumed from a cemetery in Assam on May 23 for a second autopsy as per the directions of Calcutta High Court. A second forensic report of the autopsy was submitted before the court.
“I was in court when the judge said that murder charges be added. I am a bit relieved that Faizan did not die by suicide and the stigma has not stuck to him,” the mother said.
“If we get the cooperation of the police then I want to return with my son’s body on Monday and put him to rest for the second time,” said his mother, who has been in Kolkata since May 24.
The High Court on Friday said the Paschim Medinipur police and not the Kolkata police would make arrangements for the body to be taken back to Assam. The CFSL Director should submit a report to the court about the omission made in the first post-mortem, it said.
Ranajit Chatterjee, the lawyer representing Faizan’s parents, said the matter would come up before the High Court next week, and issues like the action taken by the police and the role of the IIT Kharagpur authorities would come to the fore.
“We have no faith in the police. We want an investigation by a Special Investigation Team (SIT),” Ms. Ahmed said. The lawyer said the demand for an SIT investigation had been raised by the deceased student’s family from the very beginning.
Ms. Ahmed said that from the moment they were handed over the body of their son they were sure there had been foul play. It was only because of the intervention of the court that the truth had come out, she said. “I do not care what punishment will be meted out to those behind this. I am only interested in who did this and why,” the mother said.
(If you are in distress, please call suicide prevention helpline numbers: Aasra – 9820466726; Kiran – 1800-5990019)