Conspiracy has always played a vital role in Mamata Banerjee's political career. The latest examples are from the lavish private hotel in Malda, and at Solkhana More in Birbhum. The goons of Anubrata Mondal killed Hiralal Sheikh on the allegation that ‘their leader was being conspired to be killed in Birbhum’. According to Mamata's complaint, the opposition ‘conspired’ to kill her by causing a fire in the Malda hotel. Yet, she preferred to stay in the same Presidential Suite of the same hotel, and no orders for investigations were given!
Such weird incidents have occurred repeatedly in her political career, and the poorest sections have always been at the receiving end. Such is the case of the poor minority family of Hiralal Sheikh in Birbhum; such was also the case with the now forgotten Champala Sardar, a housewife of Bhangor, South 24 Parganas. On 26th May 1998, Mamata Banerjee claimed in a public rally at Ghatakpukur High School ground that a forensic report has yielded evidence that Champala Sardar had been raped. In fact, the forensic report stated just the opposite. Mamata’s conspiracy theory was exposed after Champala Sardar lost the Panchayat elections in 1998.
On 2nd April 2000, a Trinamool worker Bikash Basu was murdered in Noapara. Mamata claimed that the CPI (M) had killed him. However, investigations revealed that Bikash was being killed by Trinamool workers as a result of factionalism within TMC. Since 2007, she has consistently alleged that the Left Front tapped her phone. On 26th May 2011, after coming to power, she declared that she had ordered the Commissioner of Kolkata Police to investigate her phone being illegally tapped by the Left Front. However, the results of the investigation are yet to be published even after 34 months. The IPS officer, Rajeev Kumar, the erstwhile chief of STF and who she alleged was the primary accused in her phone tapping case, is now in her good books; so much so that she had even tried to settle Saradha issues with his help.
When a truck driver Gujjar Singh mistakenly intruded into her convoy, she accused him of conspiring to kill her and had him arrested. Similarly, Jyotirmoy Gupta, a poor insecticide sprayer was accused of conspiring to set the Writers’ Building on fire; even after repeated pleas, he could not evade arrest. When the Jnaneswari Express was sabotaged at Sordiha by the Maoists, she and her branded intellectuals wasted no time to accuse the CPI (M) of the sabotage to malign her as the Railways Minister. She needed no investigation to conclude so. As long as Maoists were a necessity in fulfilling her political ambition, she alleged a ‘conspiracy’ of fake encounter in the killing of Azad. After becoming Chief Minister, it was her administration who killed the Maoist Polit Buraeu member Kishenji with the help of some other Maoist leaders, one of whom surrendered and started matrimonial relations with a TMC leader.
The saga of her lies continues, and the murder of Hiralal Sheikh is just the most recent illustration.
20th April 2014