Trinamool Congress (TMC) heavyweight Anubrata Mondal on Friday exuded confidence and said that as long as Didi (Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee) was by his side, he was not demoralised. The remarks by the arrested TMC leader comes a day after the party chairperson offered him her support and said that he should be given a “hero’s welcome when released from prison”.
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“Didi is by my side and that is enough…. None spends their entire life in jail. An undertrial has to be released at one point in time. I am not demoralised,” Mr. Mondal told journalists when he was produced before a court at Bidhannagar in connection with a 2010 bomb blast case in Magalkote.
“Kesto (Anubrata Mondal) will come out of prison one day and you will accord him a hero’s welcome when he comes out of prison,” Ms. Banerjee had said at a TMC workers meeting on Thursday.
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This was the second time that Chief Minister had come up in defence of the arrested TMC leader. Mr. Mondal was arrested by the CBI on August 11 in connection with the cross-border cattle smuggling scam and has been behind bars since then. The investigation agency has claimed to have received information about several properties of the TMC leader and seized fixed deposits worth ₹16,97 crore in the name of his family members and associates.
Interestingly, the Trinamool Congress has distanced itself from former Minister Partha Chatterjee, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the school service scam. The party had stripped Mr. Chatterjee of all party and Ministerial responsibilities five days after his arrest. Mr. Mondal, however, continues to hold the post of TMC district president of Birbhum almost a month after his arrest.
BJP leader and Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari targeted the Chief Minister and said that if she wants to “honour him (Anubrata Mondal) as a hero, then she will have to go Tihar jail”.