Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee has threatened to “gouge out eyes and chop off hands” which are raised against the people of the state.
The remarks have been widely condemned by the political parties.
A Lok Sabha member from Diamond Harbour in South 24-Parganas district, he made the aggressive remarks addressing a party rally in Basirhat in North 24-Parganas on Monday.
“So long as Mamata Banerjee is there, whoever dares to glare at the people of Bengal, we can gouge their eyes out and throw them on the road. If hands are raised, we can chop off the hands,” he said, addressing the party workers in the run-up to the July 21 Martyr’s Day Rally.
The Trinamool Congress observes July 21 as the Martyrs’ Day in the memory of 13 people who were shot dead in 1993 in police firing on a Youth Congress rally led by Mamata Banerjee, then a Youth Congress leader.
“All other parties, unfortunately, have some elements like these, but the Trinamool actually is a party of hooligans and goons. In Bengal, there is no rule of law, the police will never take action because under Mamata government, police themselves are being assaulted and getting killed,” Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) MP Mohammad Salim said.
“The remarks made by Abhishek are condemnable, Indian politics doesn’t permit anyone to say such things. This in no way is going to help Mamata Banerjee and her party rather it will do damage,” said Congress leader Meem Afzal.
“Abhishek’s comments reflect the DNA of the Trinamool. The Trinamool’s DNA is that of a dictator inspired by the invader Mahmud of Ghazni,” BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh said.
Flooded with comments and criticism against the Trinamool MP, #AbhishekBanerjee has been trending on micro-blogging site Twitter since morning.
Earlier, actor turned Trinamool MP Tapas Paul had created a nationwide outrage after he was caught on successive tapes exhorting his party men to kill Marxist workers and threatened to “let loose my boys to rape their women”.
“If a CPI-M man dares to touch anybody, I will take out my gun and shoot him. I always carry a gun… I will destroy his entire clan… I will make their family pay dearly. I will ask my boys to go there. They will rape them and leave,” Paul had said addressing the people in his constituency Krishnanagar in Nadia district in June last year.
Several other Trinamool leaders too have been under the spotlight for making hate speeches.
Infamous for making inflammatory speeches, Trinamool’s Birbhum district president Anubrata Mandal during the 2013 rural polls, had exhorted his partymen to set ablaze independent candidates’ houses and hurl bombs at police if they tried to prevent them.
Party legislator from Labhpur in Birbhum district, Manirul Islam had publicly threatened to behead a Congress leader from the district and went on to claim how he had “squashed” three people under his feet for committing atrocities against women.