BJP's Babul Supriyo alleged that Trinamool supporters were trying to break into his Kolkata home.
Highlights
- Mamata Banerjee furious over arrests of 2 of her MPs
- Arrests are payback for campaign against notes ban, she says
- BJP's Babul Supriyo says video shows 'TMC goons' at his home
The BJP and Mamata Banerjee's party, the Trinamool Congress, are on a rapidly-escalating collision course that has, in the last 24 hours, included vandalism and an alleged bomb attack in Kolkata. The BJP office in Hooghly, 60 km from Calcutta was set on fire this evening. The violence is the result of the arrests of two parliamentarians, Tapas Pal and Sudip Bandyopadhyay, who are senior leaders of Ms Banerjee's party, and have been accused by the CBI of involvement in a giant Ponzi scheme worth an alleged 15,000 crores that duped small investors in Bengal, where Ms Banerjee is Chief Minister.
Here are the 10 latest developments in this big story:
Ms Banerjee says that the arrests are provoked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who she has accused of "the politics of revenge". She says the CBI was ordered by Mr Modi's office to arrest her leaders because she has taken him head-on over his decision to abolish high-denomination notes.
The CBI says the arrested Trinamool men have links to Rose Valley, a large Bengal conglomerate that ran unlicensed financial schemes which promised investors higher returns than banks, then gypped them and left them bankrupt.
The case against Rose Valley was filed in 2014. The Trinamool denies that its leaders played any role in the scam.
Tapas Pal was arrested on Friday. Sudip Bandyopadhyay was arrested yesterday. Minutes later, the BJP office in Kolkata was attacked. Stones flung at the office shattered its windows.
Today, BJP leader Babul Supriyo tweeted a video of a mob that he said was trying to break into his apartment in Kolkata. "TMC goons," he alleged.
Last night's attack on the BJP office left 12 people seriously injured, said the BJP's Siddharth Nath Singh. He said the Kolkata police did nothing to stop the assaulters because they are Trinamool workers.
Hours later, a bomb was thrown late last night at the Kolkata home of BJP leader Krishna Bhattacharya. "Three men with their faces covered barged into my house, smashed windowpanes, damaged furniture, abused and assaulted me," Ms Bhattacharya said in her police complaint.
The West Bengal Chief Minister says the arrests of her party men are "Trinamool-bandi after note-bandi" and are intended to intimidate her into calling off her campaign against the demonetisation drive, which, she says, has hurt the poor, especially in rural India.
The protests, she vowed, will get bigger. Today, 36 of her party's 46 MPs held a demonstration in Delhi. They say the police used batons or lathis without any provocation.
Ms Banerjee says the corrupt and rich tax-evaders remain unpunished, while the cash crunch that followed the notes ban has stranded farmers and others in an economy heavily dependent on cash.
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