Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee sustained severe injuries on Tuesday when the SUV he was travelling in collided with a milk van and rolled several times over off the high-speed Durgapur Expressway, police said.
An anguished Chief Minister immediately smelt conspiracy wondering whether the driver of the vehicle in which her nephew was travelling was drugged. “The police are looking into this along with many other angles” she said underscoring, “the driver of the vehicle had dozed off making it highly suspicious as to whether he was drugged.” The security of the Banerjees was not working the way it should, she added.
Another senior TMC leader Manas Bhunia who was travelling with junior Banerjee also suffered injuries along with four other security men. Bhunia last month crossed over to Trinamool after his 40-year stint with the Congress following his alleged differences with the current PCC leadership.
Banerjee had been admitted in the ITU at a multi-specialty hospital in South Kolkata with severe facial, neck and head injuries. MRI and CT scan was being conducted on him. Doctors said the MP whose car was travelling at 100-plus speed had taken the full impact in his face and was being given blood.
The accident occurred, within a few furlongs from Tata Nano site at Singur, when the first car of his convoy hit head on a milk van which had gone kaput and was being towed backwards by a crane. The front portion of this SUV had literally crumpled. Banerjee’s car hurtled in from behind and dashed against the same milk van before rolling several times down into the road-side ditch, eyewitnesses suggested.
Back to the sabotage angle floated by the Chief Minister who immediately ordered a CID inquiry into the incident: Top Trinamool leaders also did not rule out conspiracy saying some people from Murshidabad were under scanner.
Abhishek also a Trinamool Youth Congress and a plausible successor of the Chief Minister to Bengal masnad was returning from Murshidabad a Congress stronghold — held by PCC president and Congress MP Adhir Chowdhury — till a few weeks ago when the district saw a large-scale switching of sides from the Congress to the Trinamool in the name of development carried out by the CM.
However, the Congress alleges, “threat, arm-twisting and horse-treading by the Trinamool,” causing en-bloc switchover to Trinamool as a result of which all the panchayats, district board and municipalities have passed in to Trinamool hands.