Kolkata Police registered a suo motu FIR against Mamata Banerjee, former West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo, in an unprecedented move on Friday, August 29, for allegedly breaching conditions laid down by Calcutta High Court for a Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) foundation day event. The case was lodged at Hastings Police Station, marking the first time the veteran TMC leader has faced an FIR of this nature. A separate FIR was also filed against the organisers of the TMCP programme.
The controversy stems from the high court’s conditional permission granted for the TMCP foundation day celebration held on August 28 on Cathedral Road in central Kolkata. While the court had cleared the event, it had specifically directed that one side of the road remain open to traffic and had also fixed a time limit within which the gathering was to conclude. Police sources say neither condition was honoured. The designated side of the road was never opened as ordered, and the event ran well past its permitted duration — both factors that, according to investigators, formed the basis for registering the case.
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Adding to the administration’s concerns, a police official described scenes of chaos during the event, with TMCP supporters allegedly breaking through barricades and overwhelming personnel deployed to manage the crowd. The resulting disorder, the official said, left one side of Cathedral Road blocked to traffic for an extended period, compounding the very violation the court had sought to prevent.
The FIR comes at a politically charged moment. Addressing the rally, Banerjee used the platform to hit out at what she called “political atrocities” being inflicted on her party’s supporters, alleging these were being orchestrated “at the initiative of the BJP.” She went further, drawing a sharp contrast between policing under her own tenure and the present dispensation, claiming the force that once “had a human face” during her time in office had since been transformed into what she termed a “cold-blooded monster” under the current BJP-led state government.
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Police, for their part, maintain that the FIR is a procedural response grounded strictly in the specific conditions the High Court had imposed — not opening the mandated side of the road and overshooting the time limit — rather than any assessment of the political content of the rally itself. Officials reiterated that the case was registered only after a detailed review of the court’s order alongside what actually transpired on the ground at Cathedral Road.
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The development is likely to trigger fresh legal and political sparring in the state, given Banerjee’s stature within Bengal politics and the symbolic weight of an FIR being filed against her directly rather than solely against event organisers, as has typically been the pattern in the past. Whether the case leads to further legal proceedings, or becomes another flashpoint in the ongoing friction between the TMC and the state’s current administration, remains to be seen. For now, investigators say the probe will focus narrowly on establishing whether the specific HC-mandated conditions were indeed violated as alleged.
