West Bengal home secretary B.P. Gopalika filed an affidavit in Calcutta High Court on Monday saying the BJP’s Nabanna Abhiyan on September 13, which resulted in violence in the city and left a number of cops injured and government properties damaged, had been organised illegally.
The affidavit, submitted before the division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj, followed a petition stating BJP supporters were forcibly prevented from attending the rally.
It said the police had only implemented preventive orders on gatherings under Section 144 of the CrPC, which was in force around Nabanna.
The affidavit lists the alleged violations by the Nabanna Abhiyan rallyists and how police personnel were assaulted and government properties were damaged.
The affidavit says: “CCTV footage and videos captured by different local residents and others clearly show that the leaders provoked the gathering to flout the subsisting restraint order under Section 144 of the CrPC. As a result of such violent acts, public properties were damaged in Howrah and also in Kolkata, and some police personnel also suffered serious injuries. In an unprecedented manner, a police van was torched by the supporters.”
It says that on September 8, Srijan Coomar, a BJP office-bearer, had sought permission to organise a rally by the BJP state committee.
“In the said letter it was stated that members and leaders will assemble at Howrah Maidan and Santragachhi Bus Stand. After considering congestion, traffic and security, the appropriate authority denied such permission to hold an assembly and rally. It was also communicated by the appropriate authority that there was subsisting order under Section 144 of the CrPC,” the affidavit says.
Again on September 10, joint commissioner of police, headquarters, Calcutta police, refused to grant permission for the Nabanna Abhiyan rally.
However, despite “reasoned denial of permission”, BJP supporters gathered in various pockets of Howrah and also “booked seven trains to reach Howrah with banners stating Nabanna Abhiyan”, the affidavit says.
BJP counsel Smarajit Raychowdhury submitted in the court that 444 BJP workers had been arrested, 79 of them in Kolkata.
The lawyer pleaded that the court ask the government how many BJP workers were arrested and harassed without any valid reason since the rally day. Advocate-general S.N. Mookherjee opposed Roychowdhury’s claim.
