KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday launched a personal attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, after a CBI team questioned her nephew’s wife in connection with a coal pilferage case.
At a rally at Hooghly’s Dunlop ground, Mamata took potshots at the duo without naming them.
“I don’t want to malign the post of the Prime Minister. But two men from Delhi are visiting Bengal and spreading misleading words. One is hodol-kutkut (an overweight potbellied man) and the other is kimbhut-kimakar (grotesque).’’
“Two persons are running the country. One is Ravan and another is a Danav (monster),” she added.
Referring to the CBI’s interrogation of Abhishek Banerjee’s wife Rujira, Mamata linked it to BJP’s conspiracy to defame Bengal’s women and daughters.
“She (Rujira) has no involvement in the case. Bringing a daughter-in-law of a family under the scanner of a law enforcing agency is an insult of Bengal’s women. You (govt) are using the central agency to defame the women and daughters of Bengal,’’ the TMC supremo said.
A team of eight CBI sleuths had interrogated Rujira at her Kolkata residence for one-and-a-half-hour on Tuesday.
“You (Modi and Shah) are raising voice against coal smuggling, but roaming with coal smugglers and lodging in a hotel in Burdwan owned by a coal mafia,” Mamata thundered.
Retaliating Modi’s attack on her for lack of industrialisation in the eastern state, Mamata said her government wrote letters to the Centre in 2016 expressing interest to take over the Dunlop and Jessop factories.
“But till date, there is no response from your end. ... What have you done for them? Nothing,’’ she said.
JP Nadda in Bengal today
BJP chief JP Nadda will be in Bengal on Thursday to launch the party’s Lokhho Sonar Bangla crowdsourcing campaign. He will also hold a meeting with Bengal’s intellectuals at Science City.