Delhi Police ask Mamata Banerjee to appear as a witness in a 2013 protest case

The Delhi Police have served a notice on Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, a former Chief Minister of West Bengal, asking her to give a statement as a witness in a case from April 2013.

A Delhi Police team delivered the notice at her home in Kalighat, Kolkata, on 9 November, the police said in a statement. It asks her to appear at the Parliament Street police station in New Delhi. The police team stayed in Kolkata to help with the process, NDTV reported, citing the police.

Ms. Banerjee is not accused in the case. She is named as a witness.

The 2013 case

The case, number 57 of 2013, was registered at Parliament Street police station on 9 April 2013. It was filed under sections of the Indian Penal Code on obstructing and assaulting public servants on duty, rioting and unlawful assembly, the police said.

That day, Ms. Banerjee, then the Chief Minister, and her Finance Minister, Amit Mitra, arrived at the Planning Commission in Delhi for an official meeting. Activists of the Left Front and its student wing, the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), surrounded the building. They allegedly heckled the two leaders.

The protests followed the death of Sudipto Gupta, a 22-year-old SFI leader, in police custody in Kolkata. On 3 April 2013, hundreds of SFI and Jawaharlal Nehru University students had also surrounded Banga Bhawan, the West Bengal government’s guest house in Delhi.

Why now

The police statement did not say why the notice was sent 13 years after the case was filed. The reports did not carry a response from Ms. Banerjee or the Trinamool Congress.

What’s next

Ms. Banerjee is to give her statement to the Parliament Street police. No date for it has been made public.