Todi's CAB link under scanner
Sourav Sanyal
Sunday, October 07, 2007, (Kolkata)
Two weeks after his unnatural death in Kolkata, the Rizwanur Rehman case is getting murkier.
Questions are being asked about Rizwanur's father-in-law industrialist Ashok Todi's alleged proximity to top cops in Kolkata and his connections with the Cricket Association of Bengal of which Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee is president.
Todi was interrogated by the Kolkata Police in 2004 in connection with a cricket-betting racket.
Four people were arrested but Todi went scot-free, thanks to a relationship he had nurtured over the years with Lalbazar, the Kolkata Police headquarters.
As recently as June 26, Todi's hosiery firm gave 800 T-Shirts for an anti-drug rally organized by the detective department.
Gyanwant Singh, now deputy commissioner headquarters, headed that department then. Singh is one of four officers named by Rizwan for harassing him for marrying Priyanka.
Cricket was another short cut to the powers that be. Kshiti Goswami, PWD minister, says as much.
"It is now being heard that Ashok Todi played a vital role in the CAB elections.
Whether cricket had any role in Rizwanur's murder, that is what everyone is talking about," said Kshiti Goswami, PWD Minister, WB.
In the CAB elections last year, pitted against Jagmohan Dalmiya was Police Commissioner Prasun Mukherjee.
Though the police commissioner lost, Todi's money was apparently used in the election campaign.
"It's a fact that monetary power is there in CAB elections. This money can never be seen. It is always done behind the scene. If there is big money, it is always done behind the carpet," said Prashanto Gayen, Ex-Secy, CAB.
Todi may not have met Prasun Mukherjee till this September when Snehashish Ganguly introduced the two.
But thanks to Todi's connection with Ganguly -- who is an assistant secretary in the CAB and a director of Todi's hosiery company, his past favours to the police and the CAB, it is perhaps no wonder the police commissioner went to great lengths to get his daughter back for him.