The ten on ten Casanova: Meet Mamata's cop-slapping nephew

It’s rarely good news when hitherto unknown relatives of politicians show up on the front pages of newspapers.

But Akash Banerjee might give his aunt Mamata Banerjee a much needed media boost.

By being arrested for slapping a police officer, Akash allows Trinamool ministers to crow that in Mamata’s West Bengal no one is above the law. Firhad Hakim, one of her ministers even hailed it as an “exemplary execution of Raj Dharma.”

But who is Akash Banerjee?

He is 30 years old, the son of Mamata’s elder brother Kali Banerjee.  Today’s TOI has a picture of him from his Facebook page posing in sunglasses with a revolver. He also describes himself  on Facebook as a “ten-on-ten Casanova.”

No proof of his Casanova-giri is forthcoming yet but he sounds, like what they say in Tollywood, “Arre boss,  total hero”.

He’s already thrown his “Do you know who I am” weight around before. He forced his way into the Botanical Gardens after sunset when it was closed. At that time the joint director of the gardens did not file a complaint after he found out who it was. This time after he slapped and cursed a traffic constable who questioned him for blocking a busy intersection in his SUV, Akash had also walked free.  He had shoved the OC who had come to constable’s aid and said “Amake cheno? Ami Kali Babu’s chhele. Ami mukhyomontri’r bhaipo (Do you know me? I am Kali Babu’s son. I am the chief minister’s nephew.) The Bengali channels are gleefully dubbing this Bhaipo-giri.

That might have been his fatal mistake. The CM has always taken pains to keep her family at a distance when it came to politics.  She surely didn’t take kindly to having him brandish her name like a weapon. Only one nephew, Abhishek, has a clearcut political role as the head of Yuva, which connects young people to Trinamool. He was in the news recently for a lavish five-star wedding in Delhi, just the kind his rubber-slipper wearing aunt abhors. But Banerjee’s name did not appear anywhere on his fancy wedding invite which came with a box of designer chocolates. The Telegraph says Mamata’s relationship with Akash’s father is not that close though they live next to each other.

The Congress, Trinamool’s alleged ally, smelled blood and organised a protest. The media caught wind of the story. The CM, already smarting from her gaffes in the recent rape cases, acted swiftly.

Special Commissioner of Kolkata Police Sivaji Ghosh told the media “The arrests were made after the chief minister and senior officers ordered to do so.”

That’s led to the obvious question. Does it need orders from the top for the police to just do their job?

Hakim dismissed the whole fracas as “a small incident” saying that this kind of thing happens all the time in Kolkata and around the country as if the aam admi is running around slapping on duty cops.  “Akash is a bacchha chhele (young man)” he told the Ananda Bazar Patrika. “He is not connected with Trinamool.”

Akash might not be a Trinamool officer but one of the others, Amit Mishra, arrested along with him, was identified as a youth leader of the party. Another Trinamool leader Dola Sen is being investigated for allegedly slapping a national highway traffic guard when he stopped a truck headed to a minister’s house, for violating traffic rules.

Assault on a public servant to deter him from doing his duty is a non-bailable offence with imprisonment for two years, or fine, or both.

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