The statement former chief minister and CPI(M) politburo member Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee made about the honesty of chief minister Mamata Banerjee was not defamatory in nature. Mr Bhattacharjee’s lawyer Rabishankar Chatterjee made this clear in his reply to the legal notice sent to his client by the ruling Trinamul Congress.

A day after Congress workers vandalised the Murshidabad district magistrate (DM)’s office, the Murshidabad police on Friday filed FIRs against Union minister of state for railway Adhir Chowdhury, 22 Congress leaders and around 1,200 Congress workers.

A female Trinamul Congress local leader from central Kolkata stormed into a police station in a drunken state on Thursday night and allegedly abused an on-duty police officer.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) on Wednesday gave a call for a 12-hour bandh in the hills on Saturday to protest Mamata Banerjee government’s decision to set up a separate Lepcha Development Board. Ms Banerjee had announced her plan for the board during her visit to the hills last week.

The statement of former chief minister and CPI(M) politburo member Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee that he did not consider chief minister Mamata Banerjee a “symbol of honesty” has triggered a political storm with the ruling Trinamul Congress sending him a legal notice threatening to file a defamation suit.

A sub-divisional land and land reforms officer (SDLRO) was arrested for taking a bribe of `50,000 from a woman. The incident took place on Tuesday evening at Raghunathpur in Purulia. SDLRO Dulal Das was caught red-handed accepting the bribe from a woman in a hotel.

In yet another embarrassment for the Mamata Banerjee government, the Calcutta high court on Wednesday ordered the superintendent of police (SP) of Murshidabad to probe the complaint of a person Santu Sinha against the state animal husbandry minister and Trinamul Congress candidate for Rejinagar Assembly bypoll Humayun Kabir and submit a report by February 19.

An elderly woman was robbed off her gold necklace by a conman in Behala on Wednesday morning.
Aloka Ghosh, 53, of Purbasha, was waiting at the bus stop near Behala tram depot at around 11 am. A youth came to her and showed her a packet claiming that he had found it on the road and it contained money.

A protest rally organised by the intellectuals along with state Congress leaders to mark the one year of Park Street gangrape case was stopped by the police from entering Park Street on Tuesday afternoon. Venting their anger on the Mamata Banerjee government for trying to “gag their voice”, the rallyists sat on the road.

The state Cabinet on Tuesday gave its approval for the formation of a separate Lepcha Development Board for the welfare of the Lepcha community in the hills. Only last week, during her visit to the hills, the chief minister had, after a meeting with the representatives of Lepchas in Kalimpong, announced her decision to set up such a board. She had said that she would make another such body for the Buddhists of the hills.