‘Keep it quiet,’ home minister told me: Mamata
In her first public rally since losing power in West Bengal, former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee dropped a pointed political bombshell on Tuesday, claiming that her government’s Special Task Force (STF) had once arrested a key accused in a Bangladesh murder case (killing of Osman Hadi) – and that India’s home minister personally asked her to keep it quiet.
Speaking at a packed gathering in Kolkata’s Dharmatala, Banerjee said the accused had entered West Bengal through Meghalaya before being apprehended by the state STF. Without naming the individual or identifying which case she was referring to, she said the murder had “triggered a great deal of revolution in Bangladesh.”
“Then the home minister personally phoned me,” she said, before stopping short of naming the minister. “I have never spoken about it until now, I have kept silent… but you have now crossed all limits of oppression.” She added that she was withholding the name “in the interest of the country” and out of concern that disclosure could inflame public sentiment in Bangladesh.
When supporters in the crowd shouted “Tell us the name,” Banerjee refused.
“No, I will not say it,” she said. “What did the home minister say? Please tell your Bengal Police not to disclose this matter publicly. It is for the country.”
India’s current home minister is BJP leader Amit Shah, though Banerjee did not mention him by name. The remarks came as a sharp political warning to her opponents following the BJP’s defeat of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the West Bengal assembly elections in April, ending her 15-year rule.
TMC in Turmoil as Party Dissolves All Committees
The rally came amid deepening internal chaos within the TMC. Hours after at least 58 TMC-elected MLAs broke ranks and endorsed expelled party leader Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly – defying an official party directive – the TMC dissolved all its party committees and frontal organisations with immediate effect on Wednesday.
“The party will undertake a comprehensive exercise of introspection, performance review and organisational assessment at every level,” the TMC said in a statement posted on its official X handle. It added that the organisational structure would be reconstituted “in due course.”
The rebel MLAs also endorsed three additional expelled or dissenting legislators as deputy leaders and named a chief whip – moves made within 24 hours of TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee’s letter to Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose, which had put forward a rival set of names for the same posts.
Senior TMC leaders rejected the rebel move as legally invalid. “The MLAs have no authority to submit such a letter on behalf of the party. This act is legally untenable,” a party leader told PTI, noting that both Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha – who mobilised the dissidents – had already been expelled two days earlier.
The crisis has been brewing since the party’s election loss. Several senior leaders have skipped key internal meetings, and a number of elected representatives at local bodies have either resigned en masse or face arrest in pending criminal cases.
Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee are scheduled to travel to Delhi next week for a meeting of the opposition INDIA bloc, where they will discuss strategy for the upcoming monsoon session of Parliament and the possibility of a nationwide movement against the BJP government.
Whether the TMC can hold together long enough to mount a credible opposition remains an open question.
