CPIM workers beat up Mamata Banerjee in 1990.

Three decades ago, Mamata Banerjee, the then president of Youth Congress, was attacked by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) cadres.

Three decades ago, Mamata Banerjee, the then president of Youth Congress, was attacked by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) cadres. The incident dates back to August 16, 1990, which took headlines after Alam and other Communist Party of India (Marxist) cadres hit Banerjee. She suffered a skull fracture after being attacked at one of South Kolkata’s traffic crossings less than a kilometer from her Harish Chatterjee Road residence. Banerjee was rushed first to SSKM Hospital and then shifted to a private hospital at then Congress chief and former PM Rajiv Gandhi’s insistence.

Banerjee, Bengal’s CM since 2011, later narrated in her memoirs about the incident that during a rally from Hazra, a gang of goons attacked her. She mentioned that she got blows on her head and started bleeding. She covered her head with hand and somehow saved herself, she added.

On September 12, 2019, the Alipore court in West Bengal acquitted Lalu Alam, the primary accuse for attempting to murder the West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee-when she was the Youth Congress President thirty years ago.

Radhakanta Mukherjee, a government lawyer, said most of those named in the charge sheet had either died or were missing. There was nothing left in the case, and the government had decided not to waste time and money by continuing it, he said.

The court released Alam, noting that there was no proof against him, and there was no possibility that witnesses would come forward now. The key witnesses, who died during the trial, included Banerjee’s co-workers like Dibyendu Biswas, Anil Mukherjee, Dilip Majumdar, Anup Chatterjee, and Biswanath Bhattacharya.