Submitting for Pradip Todi, counsel Sanatan Mukherjee said before the ninth fast track court judge Amit Mukhopadhyay of City Sessions Court here that as his name did not figure in the dying declaration of Rizwanur, the charge of abetment cannot stand against him.
He further said that it was the duty of guardians of a family to protect their children and by doing so, no crime has been committed.
At this, the counsel for de facto complainant Ruqbanur Rehman and Kishwar Jahan, the elder brother and mother of Rizwanur respectively, disputed the submission.
But the judge held that de facto complainants have no right to argue in the instant case and their counsel can only assist the CBI counsel.
The CBI had filed a case of abetment to suicide of Rizwanur against industrialist Ashok Todi, father of Priyanka, whom Rizwanur had married in 2007, his brother Pradip Todi and five others including three police officers.
The court is at present hearing the pleas of the defendants and the CBI over framing of charges against the accused persons following which the actual trial would begin.
Rizwanur was found dead near railway tracks in Dumdum area of Kolkata on September 21, 2007, just a month after his marriage to Priyanka on August 18, 2007, after which his mother and brother had moved the High Court for an independent CBI probe into his unnatural death.