Hastings police book Mamata Banerjee over a Cathedral Road court order

Hastings Police Station in Kolkata registered Case No. 112 on 28 August against Mamata Banerjee and organisers of the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad foundation-day programme on Cathedral Road. The complaint, signed by Sub-Inspector Apu Baidya, says a Calcutta High Court order in WPA No. 21728 of 2026 was broken. The bench had allowed the event on one flank of the road and set a time limit. Police say both flanks were taken and the clock was ignored.

The FIR lists Sections 61(2), 223, 125(a), 132 and 285 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Those heads cover conspiracy, disobedience of an order by a public servant, and related public-order counts. The complaint alleges that Banerjee and the organisers provoked supporters, that barricades were pushed aside, and that workers jostled police. Traffic on Cathedral Road stopped. Hundreds of Trinamool workers had gathered. Banerjee addressed them.

Kolkata Police described the filing as a case on the court order. An officer said the role of everyone named would be examined. The allegations are not findings. They are a police paper. Banerjee has not been convicted of anything in this file. The High Court order itself is the measuring stick: one flank open, a finish time, a student-wing anniversary.

Cathedral Road sits beside institutions that do not empty for a party rally. A single open flank was the court's way of keeping a through-route. Occupying both flanks is the fact police say they can show on camera and in traffic logs. The time overshoot is the other fact. Together they are enough, in the station's view, to write a first information report against the person who spoke from the stage.

Bengal politics will read the FIR as tit-for-tat or as enforcement, depending on the reader. The legal question is narrower. Did the crowd stay inside the map the judges drew. If the answer is no, the named adults on the stage can be asked why. If the answer is yes, the FIR will have to explain the video.

No arrest was announced with the registration. Investigation is the next listed step. Banerjee's party will treat the case as pressure. The station will treat it as a court-order file. Both descriptions can run until a magistrate sees the papers.

The useful documents now are the High Court order, the station diary and whatever footage shows the second flank. Everything else is speech. Case 112 is the speech that was written down.