Possible eyewitness provides leads into Rizwanur's death

Kolkata, Nov 4: In an unexpected twist to the running controversy over Rizwanur Rahman's death, a garment dealer has claimed to have witnessed kidnapping of a man barely an hour before the computer graphic teacher was found dead.

Indranil Ghosh, a resident of Ajoynagar in south Kolkata, was waiting for a bus near Khanna cinema hall in the city's northern part on September 21, when he noticed a youth being bundled into a private car.

''I saw three men dragging a youth and shoving him into a car that sped towards Ultadanga. I also saw one of the abductors trying to gag the youth inside the vehicle,'' he told a Bengali television channel.

Ghosh said that it appeared to him that the man he saw being abducted, could be Rizwanur Rahman, whose body was found beside the railway tracks at Patipukur in the Ultadanga area on the city's northern fringe the same day.

Following this startling statement, CBI sleuths, investigating into Rizwanur's death, interrogated him for hours till early today.

According to him, it was around 0930 hours, when the incident took place. A post mortem of Rizwanur's body put the estimated time of death at 1032 hours.

Ghosh identified one of the abductors as a criminal, ''known to all police stations in south Kolkata''.

UNI