Kolkata: Bengal BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday said using a 'lady' police personnel to stop him during BJP's march to the state secretariat recently was part of a "bigger ploy" to defame and book him in a nasty case. On September, 13 during the BJP's march to the West Bengal secretariat against various corruption issues, a video went viral wherein the leader of the opposition in West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari was seen telling a lady police officer, "Do not touch my body. You are female and I am male."
As Adhikari was being increasingly being trolled in the social media and Trinamool Congress, with the party national general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee questioning Adhikari's "fascination' towards men, the leader of the opposition has come forward to explain his behaviour on this count. According to him, using lady police personnel to stop him on that day was a bigger ploy to defame him and book him in a nasty case.
"The entire ploy was made following the instructions of the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee and the ground-level implementation of the ploy was done by three IPS officers namely Surya Pratap Yadav, Akash Magharia and Gyanwant Singh. "First Yadav tried to stop me and then Magharia accompanied him. After that Singh emerged in the scene. Then suddenly a group of lady constables led by a sub-inspector Christiana Maria came forward. Maria was pushing me repeatedly. So, I politely addressed her as a mother and requested her not to touch me. Had I retaliated they would have got a chance to defame me and book me," Adhikari explained.
Reacting to Abhishek Banerjee's comments about "fascination' towards men, Adhikari said that this is a reflection of Banerjee's anger as his ploy by using lady officers failed. "I request the chief minister to fight the battle politically and legally instead of taking that to the personal level," the leader of the opposition said. Speaking on the occasion, he also referred to Mamata Banerjee's predecessor and the last chief minister in the previous Left Front regime, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
"I had been in opposition politics when CPI(M) was in power. The most respected and honest politician, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is aware of that. The truth is the truth. I must admit that Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is among those rarest of honest chief ministers and politicians of West Bengal," he said. (IANS)
