FILE: Mamata Banerjee addresses a Trinamool Congress rally in Kolkata
Police firing on a Mamata Banerjee rally in 1993 that killed 13 Congress workers was "worse than the Jallianwala Bagh massacre", a commission of inquiry has said in its report.
The Justice Sushanta Chatterjee Commission has concluded in its report submitted today that the firing on July 21, 1993 at a Youth Congress rally led by Ms Banerjee, then 38, "was unprovoked and unconstitutional."
"The commission has come to a conclusion that the instant case is even worse than Jallianwala Bagh massacre," Justice Chatterjee, a retired high court judge, said, adding, "The people who were at the helm of the home department as well as the top police brass cannot escape responsibility for the firing."
The inquiry was set up by Ms Banerjee who now heads the Trinamool Congress, immediately after she took over as chief minister of West Bengal in 2011, to ascertain who issued the order to the police to open fire at the rally she was leading 21 years ago.
She marks July 21 as martyrs day every year and leads a rally in remembrance of the 13 people killed.
On that July day in 1993, with the Left in power, the police had opened fire after Youth Congress leaders blockaded Writers' Building - where the state secretariat is in Kolkata. They were demanding that the voters' identity cards be the only document required for voting, to stop what they called "scientific rigging" in elections by the Left.
The Justice Chatterjee commission has examined over 300 witnesses, including former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Left Front chairperson Biman Bose. Several Indian Police Service officers, including Tushar Talukdar who was the city police commissioner at the time of the incident, challenged the validity of the commission before the Calcutta High Court.
In 1997, Ms Banerjee left the Congress and launched the Trinamool Congress, which she led to a spectacular victory in the assembly elections of 2011, ousting the Left, which had ruled Bengal for over three decades. Many of those in the forefront of the July 1993 rally left the Congress along with her and are now key leaders of her party.