Kolkata Police book Mamata Banerjee over TMCP foundation-day crowd

Kolkata Police registered a suo motu first information report against Mamata Banerjee and the organisers of a Trinamool Chhatra Parishad foundation-day meeting held on Cathedral Road on Friday, 28 August. Hastings Police Station Case No. 112 names the former chief minister and the student-wing organisers under Sections 61(2), 223, 125(a), 132 and 285 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

The complaint was written by Sub-Inspector Apu Baidya. It alleges a criminal conspiracy to break a Calcutta High Court order in WPA No. 21728 of 2026, that supporters were provoked, that barricades were pushed aside and that police on duty were jostled. An officer said the role of everyone involved will be examined. The allegations have not been tested in court.

Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya had, on Tuesday, allowed both factions of the fractured student wing to hold separate foundation-day events on Friday. Mamata Banerjee's group was given Cathedral Road. Ritobrata Banerjee's group was given Rani Rashmoni Avenue. The window was noon to 3 p.m. The bench said organisers should try to keep attendance within 1,500 and that only one flank of the road should be used, so traffic could still move. Police were told to keep order and to prevent any incident.

Officers say workers occupied both flanks of Cathedral Road, blocked vehicles and then shoved the barriers. Hundreds gathered. Banerjee addressed the meeting. Photographs released by PTI show her with party MPs Kalyan Banerjee, Babul Supriyo and Dola Sen at the site.

The political setting is a split inside the student organisation that once answered to a single leadership. Two foundation days on the same date forced the High Court to draw a map of Kolkata in an order. The police case now treats a crowd that spilled over that map as a criminal file against the most senior figure on the Cathedral Road side.

Section 61(2) of the BNS covers conspiracy. Section 223 deals with obstructing a public servant. Section 125(a) and 132 address force and hurt in ways that can be applied when a crowd pushes police. Section 285 concerns rash or negligent acts that endanger human life. Together they convert a breach of conditions into a cognisable case. Whether a court will keep all five sections is a later question. The immediate fact is that an FIR exists against a former chief minister who still leads the Trinamool Congress.

Kolkata Police report to the state home department. The Trinamool government is no longer headed by Banerjee in the chief minister's chair, after the political changes of the past year, but the party she leads remains the dominant force in the city. A suo motu case written by a sub-inspector at Hastings therefore lands in a chain of command that is politically delicate even when the legal paper is ordinary.

The High Court can be asked to take up alleged disobedience of its own order. That route sits beside the police case and may move faster. For now the record is this: a judge drew a line down Cathedral Road, a crowd crossed it, and the station house put Banerjee's name on the first page of Case 112.

Nothing in the FIR proves she ordered the second flank opened. Conspiracy is an allegation. The photographs prove she was there and that she spoke. The next filing that matters will be the case diary, and then whatever the court does with the sections chosen on Friday night.