INDIA, Updated Jan 05, 2013 at 09:12am IST

Kolkata: Battling injuries for nearly a month, the 36-year-old social activist Mir Aminul Islam passed away in Kolkata on January 1. It took Kolkata police Aminul’s suicide attempt on December 3 to finally snap into action and arrest Sehazada Bux, who is accused of raping a minor girl and for whom Aminul was trying to get justice.

Aminul had set himself ablaze outside the Karaya police station in Kolkata, citing police insensitivity while trying to get justice for the minor who was raped. He was frustrated that his efforts to bring the accused Bux to justice led nowhere.

“The police and Sehazada are the real criminals. I want justice,” said Aminul’s mother Shahnaz Izhar. Aminul is dead, but the child for whom he gave his life, lives in horror of the past.

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“Sehazada used to call me at his home whenever his wife was absent and do nasty things. He even threatened me and my family of dire consequences if I revealed his acts to anyone,” said the rape survivor.

Before his death Aminul had alleged that the police were initially reluctant to arrest Sehazada because the accused had close links with them. Instead, Aminul alleged, he himself was falsely charged in a case and intimidated by the police.

“Police and higher authorities did not take any step. They did not hear him,” said Md Naushad, counsel for Aminul’s family. Sehazada was finally arrested a day after Aminul’s suicide attempt and after constant pressure, the state government has now initiated a probe against policemen named by the dead activist.

It was under the same police station’s jurisdiction that the high profile Rizwanur Rehman death case occurred in 2007. The latest incident has given ammunition to the Opposition. “I demand immediate CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) investigation so that the truth can be unveiled,” Pradip Bhattacharya, President, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee.

At the time of Rizwanur Rehman’s death case, the present West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was the leader of the Opposition. Mamata had launched an all out attack against the police for abetting Rizwanur’s death. Rizwanur was found dead near the railway tracks in Dumdum area of Kolkata on September 21, 2007, just a month after his marriage to industrialist Ashok Todi’s daughter Priyanka on August 18, 2007.