She then agreed to depose through video-conference on August 21 this year but it never happened as the court did not have the necessary infrastructure. Both the trial court and then the Calcutta High Court rejected this plea but, with the lapse of time, Banerjee did not appear in court thereafter. But her cross-examination by the defence counsel did not happen as Alam’s counsel prayed for cross-examination of other witnesses first. Banerjee appeared in court on December 6, 1994, and was examined by the prosecution. The trial started on November 2, 1992, more than two years after the assault. Alam was acquitted under Section 232 of the Criminal Procedure Act. Cross-examinations in the case ended on August 21 and, on Thursday, judge Pushpal Satpathy deemed the evidence in front of him inadequate to convict Alam. The key witnesses, who died during the trial, included Banerjee’s colleagues like Dibyendu Biswas, Anil Mukherjee, Dilip Majumdar, Anup Chatterjee and Biswanath Bhattacharya. The previous Left Front regime had effectively blocked the case for 21 years from 1990 to 2011, Mukherjee added. There was nothing left in the case and the government had, therefore, decided not to waste time and money by pursuing it, he said. Government lawyer Radhakanta Mukherjee said most of those named in the charge sheet had either died or were absconding. ‘Previous Left regime blocked case for 21 years’ It was the prosecution, frustrated by the lack of any progress, that asked for the case’s closure. Photographers doing the rounds of the city because of the bandh captured the attack and the images - splashed in newspapers the next morning - stayed with a generation of readers. I covered my head with my hand and saved myself somehow,” she added. I got blows on my head and started bleeding. “We took out a rally from Hazra when we were attacked by a gang of goons. I tiptoed out of the house without informing her,” Banerjee, Bengal’s CM since 2011, later recounted in her memoirs. My mother was apprehensive and did not want me to step out of home. Banerjee, curiously, never lost an election - to the Lok Sabha or the Vidhan Sabha - after that attack. The attack - at one of south Kolkata’s busiest traffic intersections less than a kilometre from her Harish Chatterjee Road residence - and her pushback against the CPM after that helped her cement her position as a growing anti-Left force at a time when much of the opposition in Bengal was labelled “tarmuj (watermelon)” for being green (Congress) outside but red (or pro-CPM) inside. The assault propelled Banerjee to national prominence six years after her giant-slaying act (she did the unthinkable by defeating CPM veteran Somnath Chatterjee in the then Left bastion of Jadavpur in 1984).
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