Kolkata: The student of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, Faizan Ahmed, was murdered, and it was only after the second autopsy was conducted. But after a year, a startling revelation was made before the Calcutta High Court that, Faizan was hit by a sharp weapon on his head, stabbed in the neck area, and then shot from behind at the neck.
The Calcutta High Court is hearing the case of the third-year IIT Mechanical Engineering student Faizan Ahmed, whose partially decomposed body was recovered from his hostel inside the IIT-KGP campus on October 14, 2022. Soon after the recovery, IIT authorities, as well as Kharagpur police had claimed that the IITian committed suicide.
When the shocking news of his death reached the family and they came to Kharagpur, after seeing the body, they argued that their son could not commit suicide and that it was a murder. After the first postmortem report, Kharagpur police repeated the same claim. However, in the autopsy, it could not be established how the 23-year-old died. Parents approached the Calcutta High Court. The court first appointed forensic expert Dr. Ajay Gupta, who recommended a second postmortem. The fresh postmortem revealed that Faizan’s case was homicidal in nature. The court of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha also constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and mentioned that the future probes would be on the line of homicide.
But Kolkata police moved to the division bench to stop the SIT probe. Significantly, IIT KGP also went to the division bench to quash the case. However, the division bench of Chief Justice TS Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmai Bhattacharyya upheld the order of a single bench, which had declared the death of Faizan Ahmed a ‘homicide’ and continued with the SIT led by IPS officer K. Jayaraman.
Role of SIT, so far
The murder of Faizan Ahmed, a resident of Tinsukia, Assam, was ordered to be investigated on June 14, 2023. And understanding the seriousness of the case, Justice Mantha had ordered a narco test for the accused as well. But the SIT took up the case only in October and moved very slowly. It was hauled up by the court for its tardy progress. Significantly, even after the court’s order that the SIT would probe from a homicide angle, the investigating agency worked on the suicide theory.
What happened in the last hearing?
Forensic expert Dr. Gupta submitted his detailed autopsy report in the court of Justice Joy Sengupta on May 21 and mentioned that Faizan was first hit with a sharp weapon, stabbed in the neck, and then shot at point-blank range from the back of his neck. Thereafter, the court ordered the SIT to submit the video and still photograph of the uppermost part of the outer right side of the neck of the victim. The SIT was also told to consult Dr. Gupta, who has to submit his final report and provide every bit of documentation and support he needs. The justice has changed, and now the hearing will take place in the court of Justice Amrita Sinha. Justice Sinha had to hear it on June 13, but the case did not get listed.
“IIT Kharagpur authorities and SIT have to answer a lot in the murder of my son. And if a mother will not get justice, it means no child of any mother is safe in IITs,” Faizan’s mother Rehana Ahmed told eNewsroom over the phone.
“The forensic expert’s detailed postmortem report confirms our belief that it was a clear case of murder. In his report, West Medinipur Superintendent of Police Dinesh Kumar mentioned that the body of Faizan was found in a pool of blood, which only establishes the claim of Dr. Gupta that he was hit, stabbed, and shot. Why the SIT did not investigate so far along this direction should also be considered as a matter of great concern by the court,” reacted Faizan’s lawyer Ranajit Chatterjee to eNewsroom.
