The Trinamool Congress lodged an FIR today after it found a car trailing the convoy of party chief Mamata Banerjee and claimed it was a conspiracy to kill her. “There was a conspiracy to kill Mamata,” party general secretary Mukul Roy said after filing the case. Earlier, Banerjee said the car with a press sticker chased her convoy last night and tried to dash against it while she was going home after attending a meeting at painter Suvaprasanna’s residence in Salt Lake.
“The driver of the car did not have a licence,” she claimed, adding the people in it were “spying” on her as her convoy did not have a police escort. The car was actually being used by Bengali news channel, 24 Ghonta, which offered a very different version of the incident and lodged an FIR on grounds of harassment. 24 Ghonta chief reporter Ranjan Roy said, their team landed up at the residence of Suvaprsanna after they got to know that the Railway minister was conducting a meeting. “When the meeting dragged on for a long time, we wanted to know, the participants of the meeting.”
Around midnight, the channel was asked not to shoot pictures. The channel said that the Railway minister’s convoy came back after it left to where the car was waiting and in the presence of Banerjee, and the Union minister of state for shipping, Mukul Roy, the reporter and camerapersons were verbally abused and heckled. Thereafter the FIR was lodged by the Trinamool Congress and police came and escorted the journalist to the police station.
Some of the media associations have condemned the attack on 24 Ghonta. West Bengal commerce and industry minister, Nirupam Sen said, it reflected the culture of the Central minister.