Kolkata/New Delhi, Apr 10: Irate Trinamool Congress workers yesterday gheraoed and ransacked CPI-M offices in Kolkata, Burdwan, Midnapore, North and South 24-Pargana districts after TV channels showed live footage of CPI-M student activists pushing and heckling Finance Minister Amit Mitra outside the Yojana Bhavan. Mitra's kurta was torn by the activists.
Despite appeal by Trinamool leaders to apply restraint, TC workers gheraoed CPI-M offices in the districts, chanted slogans and then proceeded to ransack the Left party's offices.
In Delhi, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee who vented her ire at Delhi Police in the presence of Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and minister of state Rajiv Shukla, is unwell. Her meeting with the Prime Minister scheduled for Tuesday evening was cancelled.
A furious Mamata Banerjee said " we are not safe in Delhi. The people of India will retaliate. I don't bother whether they kill me, but they can't stop me."
Banerjee today faced protests over death of an SFI member from Left activists who also heckled her Finance Minister Amit Mitra outside the Planning Commission office here.
A group of protesters from Left organisations, which waited for the Trinamool Congress Chief outside the Commission's office, raised slogans against her when she arrived with Mitra at 3:45 PM to meet plan panel Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
Banerjee, who was advised by police not to get down from her car and drive inside, however, chose to walk through the slogan-shouting and placard-wielding crowd into the building.
The protesters heckled Mitra whose kurta was torn in the melee. Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee and Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim also faced the ire of the activists who were protesting the death of Sudipto Gupta, a leader of CPI(M)'s student wing SFI.
As SFI and CPI(M) members chanted "Mamata Banerjee hai hai (Mamata down down), TMC hai hai, Hatyari Mamata sharm karo (have shame, killer Mamata)", an agitated Chief Minister walked into the building shouting that "this is uncivilised behaviour".
"You know why they are protesting. I have 10 lakh people with me. I can bring them to Delhi. They don't want development of West Bengal," she said.
Irked by the scene that unfolded outside, she complained to Ahluwalia, "You have created a new precedent. My minister was assaulted. This is scandalous. There were 20 hooligans. Can you stop development of a state like this."
SFI leader Ritabrata Banerjee said, "Our protest is to show Mamata Banerjee that Sudipto Gupta's death was not a petty matter. People are deeply concerned about what is happening in West Bengal."
SFI has alleged that 22-year-old Gupta died after he was beaten up by the police which has maintained that he was killed in an accident.
Banerjee had termed the incident as "unfortunate" but later called it a "petty" matter, drawing criticism from the Left.
CPI(M) leader Nilotpal Basu opposed violence in such protests but said Banerjee "should accept that these are public outpourings against the manner in which the students are treated under the Trinamool rule."
"She kept on saying it is a small and petty matter and refused to order a judicial probe.... Do you think that after all this, the students will shower petals on her," Basu said.
Reacting to the incident, CPI leader Atul Kumar Anjaan said he "disapproved" of the way the protest was carried out but castigated the Trinamool government in West Bengal for the death of the SFI activist.
"I want to ask what her government has done (in regard to the death case). The way her government, her administration and her police functioned, they killed the student in their custody, it is a matter of shame for all," he said.
"She (Mamata) was herself in student politics and she might have organised such protests, such demonstrations herself. She will herself have to face the wrath of the people when such a gruesome incident has occurred under her rule," Anjaan said.
Maintaining that all democratic-minded people strongly condemn the way the youth "was brutally murdered in police custody," the CPI leader said "instead of apologising and ordering a judicial inquiry, she has given a clean chit to the police."
Anjaan said in a democracy, everyone has a right to protest but it should be done in a peaceful and decent manner.
