Ranjeet Singh Kohli alias Raquibul Hassan, accused of deceit, torture and running a sex racket by his estranged wife Tara Shahdeo, on Tuesday revealed to the police that his struggle for family pension for his mother Kaushalya Rani alias Kausar Parveen brought him closer to judicial officers following which, he started working as a broker in the judiciary managing cases for others during his custodial interrogation.
Kohli's father Harnam Kohli was an officer with the Sales Tax Department and Kaushalya worked as his house maid. later, she is said to have married Harnam after his first wife died.According to sources, Kohli, whose father died in 1981, was brought up by his mother in destitution as she did not get any family pension due to lack of follow-ups and lackluster attitude of the Government officials. As he grew up, he started exploring for the family pension, for which his mother was entitled to.
Kohli further said that he met several Government officials in the Commercial Taxes Department and using his communication skills developed a good rapport with them. He also met some higher officials in the department in Patna, who also helped him in getting several papers which were required to get the pension for his mother.
Meanwhile, he also started understanding how the Government system functions. In the year, 1996-97, he was asked to bring succession certificate of his mother from the court in order to make a claim for his father’s pension.
Kohli then started doing rounds of the court for getting the succession certificate which took him over one-and-a-half years for him to obtain. During this time, Kohli got in touch with a number of junior level judges in Gumla and some of the retired judges and took advice in this regard as and when required.
Finally, his mother started receiving pension after 1997-98. Meanwhile, he was in contact with several junior level judicial officers, including Mustaque Ahmed who was posted in Gumla at that time.Meanwhile, following a recommendation, he also managed to get pension of some retired judges, who were not getting their pension. Finally, Ranjeet Singh Kohli became Raquibul Hassan after running around the Government offices and courts for so many years.
Meanwhile, the Ranchi Police on Tuesday interrogated Nagar Utari DSP Surjeet Singh, who is also a childhood friend of Kohli. The police, issuing notices to three DSPs whose names surfaced in the case, but only Singh was available for interrogation. The other two – Torpa SDPO Anudeep Singh and Deoghar SDPO Animesh Nethani — are expected to arrive on Wednesday.
According to the police, Singh, interrogated for over one-and-a-half hours, denied any involvement in any of the illegal activities alleged in the statements recorded by the victim. Singh asserted that he knew Kohli since childhood as they were residing in the same locality. After he was selected for the State Civil Services, he left the place but remained in Kohli’s contact.
Singh has accepted that he also visited Kohli’s place occasionally and also attended his marriage party at Hotel Radisson Blu on Kohli’s invitation, but had no idea about his illegal activities or had any sort of involvement in his businesses. Singh also said that he had no idea about Kohli torturing his wife.