Rizwan outrage goes Online

Statesman News Service

KOLKATA, Oct. 8: The tragic tale of Rizwan-ur Rehman and Priyanka Todi has caught the imagination of the Internet community. Blogs, forums and Internet polls flood the webpage when you type in “Rizwan-ur Rehman” in any search engine. Netizens are forming friendships over their common feeling for the Muslim young man who they believe had to pay with his life for his love for a Hindu girl.

Bloggers vent their feelings on Rizwan-ur’s untimely death. On web forums, netizens use strong words to talk about what has happened, such as on Love’s Ragpicker Tales. Some have written poems and uploaded them on online forums. One such poem is Good Night, Sweet Prince: to Rizwanur Rehman”. Another is called Song dedicated to Rizwanur Rehman: Come on to me...” The poet explains the song saying: “Rizwanur is Love’s Ragpicker... Priyanka should be left undisturbed with her legitimate tears, wherever she is now...”

On Live Like a Flame, a netizen urges those who visit the page to join a worldwide protest against those who caused young Rizwan-ur’s untimely death. A petition to the chief minister of the state can be signed by all those who endorse “Justice for Rizwan-ur”. At the time that this story was written, there were 1503 signatures registered on the website called www.petitiononline.com.

On Orkut too, many communities have been created with former students of Rizwan-ur Rehman being their members. Here people have joined in various forum discussions that include asking people to stand up and put up a fight for justice to calling on members to boycott Lux hosiery products. Many polls have been conducted as well and the response is overwhelming.

One such poll done by the ‘Rizwan Sir fans club’ community, which had asked members to vote on whether they believe Rizwan will get justice from law, has witnessed a split result. While 47 per cent had said yes, 52 per cent of the respondents feel otherwise. The same community had done a poll to know whether students of Rizwan-ur were fighting enough for his cause. In this case, 75 per cent of the respondents felt that they were not doing what should have been done. Another poll conducted by the ‘Arena Multimedia Chowringee’ community had asked members whether Rizwan-ur should have given in to the pressure to save his life. This too had yielded split result.

CP blames media

KOLKATA, Oct. 8: Mr Jyoti Basu today reiterated that the CP’s remarks in the Rizwan case at a Press conference two days after the youth’s mysterious death “were unheard of.” The CPI state secretary has written to Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee demanding removal of the CP and two other IPS officers whose names have figured “for the sake of impartial probe.

However, the CP submitted before the human rights commission that his statements were not accurately reported by the media, Mr B Mahapatra, secretary of the commission said. The commission has asked the electronic media houses to submit to it video recordings of the Press conference. The panel will deliberate on the report on 12 October. n SNS

See also Kolkata Plus