A 50-year-old woman from Assam has been fighting a lonely battle, for almost two years, for justice for her only son who was allegedly murdered.

Faizan Ahmed was found dead on the IIT Kharagpur campus in October 2022. The initial assumption was suicide, but discrepancies raised by Faizan’s family led to a deeper investigation.

Rehana Ahmed, who at times has to travel to Calcutta to appear before a special investigation team, said she has been keenly watching the way many Calcuttans are out on the streets demanding justice for the junior doctor who was raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on August 9.

She said she can feel the pain the parents of a “beti of Bengal” are going through.

She said she was “pained” that only a few care about ensuring justice for her son.

“The alleged institutional failure (at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital), which has rocked the state, has been as much responsible for the death and denial of justice in my son’s case,” said Rehana, who lives in Assam’s Dibrugarh.

“What is worse is that no one cares. Our cry for justice seems to have faded from public memory.”

Following a plea from Faizan’s family in November 2022, Justice Rajasekhar Mantha of Calcutta High Court ordered a second post-mortem. Faizan’s body was exhumed from a burial ground in Dibrugarh.

A forensic medicine specialist told the court in May 2023 that the death appeared to be a case of “homicide”. The report prompted the court to constitute a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the case.

The forensic medicine expert told the court, while giving his “further opinion” in May this year, that there was “a gunshot wound” and “a stab wound” on Faizan’s body.

But justice has eluded the deceased student’s mother. Rehana does not yet know how Faizan died.

This newspaper reported on October 11, 2023, on Faizan’s first death anniversary, that the doctors at Midnapore Medical College and Hospital who conducted the first
autopsy in October 2022 allegedly did not mention the injuries or raise any point that could have led the police to conclude that it was a “case of suicide”.

The police accepted the inconclusive report and the version of the IIT authorities that Faizan had been unhappy with himself and that it was a case of suicide.

“It haunts me that we have yet to know who was responsible for the gunshot wound and a stab wound on Faizan’s body.... We all know Faizan was ragged in the name of an assimilation programme at IIT. But do the students at IIT Kharagpur use guns to eliminate their targets in the name of ragging? Also, how did the IIT Kharagpur authorities and the police ignore what emerged during the second post-mortem and ‘further opinion’ of the forensic medicine expert?” Rehana told Metro.

“These are all instances of institutional failures. But who will hold them accountable?”

The IIT authorities disbanded the assimilation programme months after Faizan’s death.

His mother said that in the RG Kar case, at least the aggrieved parents have a section of the city by their side. “I have been fighting a lonely battle all along,” she said.

“I still believe that the SIT, composed of officers from Mamata Banerjee’s police force, will unearth the truth,” Rehana said.

Sources in the SIT said the probe was underway and the final report of the forensic expert was awaited.

A lawyer connected with the case said: “As the case has moved so many benches, the progress is delayed.”