Trinamool Congress MPs protested in front of the Union home ministry on Friday morning against the previous day’s Enforcement Directorate raids on I-PAC in Calcutta, prompting Delhi police to forcibly remove them and detain them for about five hours.

Videos circulating on social media showed the police lifting or dragging the group of eight MPs, who included Derek O’Brien and Mahua Moitra, to the force’s vehicles.

In a post on X, Mamata Banerjee condemned the treatment of her party colleagues as “shameful”.

The protesting MPs accused the BJP-led central government of misusing the ED to target Trinamool, which has appointed the private political consultancy I-PAC as its election strategist.

Holding placards and chanting slogans such as “Bengal rejects Modi-Shah’s filthy tactics”, the MPs had tried to enter Kartavya Bhavan, which houses the Union home ministry, around 8.40am but were stopped by security personnel.

MPs O’Brien, Satabdi Roy, Moitra, Bapi Haldar, Saket Gokhale, Pratima Mondal, Kirti Azad and Sharmila Sarkar later protested at
the gates.

After their forced removal around 10am, they were detained at Parliament Street police station till about 3pm.

The police said the MPs had been detained because they had protested without permission in a high-security area.

Moitra, seen crying “shame, shame” in a video as policewomen carry her away, later attacked Union home minister Amit Shah.

“Shameless Amit Shah using Delhi Police to drag us away from the peaceful protest at Home Ministry,” she posted on X.

Terming the ED the “extortion directorate”, she told the media from detention: “Never before in democracy (has the) government made ED its agent to steal information and election strategy from our political consultant. ED was sent to the office of our political consultant for dacoity of information.”

After her release, she said: “ED came in to do a robbery in our house. ED is doing political espionage. Everybody knows that all our election data is in the I-PAC office.”

She added: “One month (sic) before the election, in the middle of the special intensive revision (of electoral rolls), in some old — 7-8 years old — coal scam case, they suddenly woke up and they came to get all our information. They have come to tamper with our information.”

Moitra defended the Bengal chief minister, who had on Thursday stormed into the I-PAC office in the middle of the ED raid and carried away what she said were sensitive political documents.

“If someone comes into your house to do a robbery, you are within your rights to go and protect your property. Mamata Banerjee is the leader of our party. We have every right to go there and save it, else ED will take it and give it to the BJP,” Moitra said.

Azad, sharing a video from the police station, posted on X that no FIR had been registered “so far” and that the MPs had not been “told the reason” for their detention.

“No senior officer is available. If this is what is happening to elected members of Parliament, we can understand what must be the plight of a common man,” he wrote.

Gokhale tweeted: “After the failure of SIR, the BJP has resorted to its old tactic of using pliant Central Agencies.”

Mamata hit out at the BJP.

“Dragging elected representatives on the streets for exercising their democratic right to protest outside the Home Minister’s office is not law enforcement — it is arrogance in uniform. This is a democracy, not the BJP’s private property,” she posted on X.

Trinamool national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee tweeted: “Democracy is punished. Criminals are rewarded. Agencies are weaponised. Elections are manipulated.”

He added: “Jail the protesters. Bail the rapists. This is BJP’s version of New India. Even if the rest of the country is forced to surrender, Bengal will resist. We will fight you tooth and nail and defeat
you, no matter how much force you unleash.”