Mamata Banerjee leads protest in Kolkata over alleged attacks on TMC leaders

NEW DELHI: TMC chief Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday led a sit-in protest in Kolkata over alleged attacks on party leaders, including nephew Abhishek Banerjee. This comes a day after police denied permission to the West Bengal opposition party to hold any protest. Addressing the people, Mamata accused the BJP of "rigging counting in 177 of 294 assembly seats to win Bengal elections". "TMC leaders are being threatened in Bengal by cops," she further said. Mamata has dared the Bharatiya Janata Party to "arrest her if they want”, adding that she would go to Delhi if not allowed to protest in Kolkata. Huge crowd has gathered at the spot, including party MP Kalyan Banerjee. “The police are trying to break a political party. If you don’t let me protest democratically here, I will go to Delhi. We have an INDIA bloc meeting as well,” Mamata had said on Monday. “You have targeted Bengal and made us lose through SIR and logical discrepancies. In 177 constituencies, polls were rigged and machines were hacked. I am a sufferer myself. I was forced out of the counting centre when I was winning by 13,000 votes," she added. Abhishek Banerjee was attacked by protesters in Sonarpur on Kolkata’s southern outskirts last week and was also served a CID summons in connection with a fake-signature investigation. The 38-year-old MP was allegedly chased, heckled and physically assaulted by a crowd while on his way to visit the family of a TMC worker killed in post-poll violence in Sonarpur. Protesters reportedly shouted slogans of “chor, chor” (thief, thief), hurled eggs, stones and slippers, and tore his shirt. During the roughly 10-minute confrontation, he was punched and slapped, and his spectacles were broken.