Tushar Talukdar, former Commissioner of Kolkata Police died at a private nursing home this afternoon. He was 85 years old and was not keeping well for quite some time. He was admitted to the hospital on 7 January. Talukdar was the commissioner of police from 1992 to 1996. A bright student of Presidency College, he joined the Indian Police Service.
He was a scholar par excellence. He was a scholar on Sartre and Rahul Sankirtayan. He was the first person to do research on the death of Prafulla Chaki and came to conclude that he was hanged at the Mokama railway station and then beheaded. The British police brought his severed head to Kolkata and showed it to the revolutionaries and told them that they would have the same fate if they continued to take part in the revolutionary movement.
Talukdar, an ardent follower of Marx and Lenin had put their photos in the chamber of the commissioner of police at Lalbazar. A friend of The Statesman, he used to come to Statesman House to meet the senior journalists. It is a hard coincidence that he passed away on the very day vocalist Rashid Khan too breathed his last as the former police chief was an avid fan of the classical singer.