Tina Biswas, a UK-based author, who has published a book based on the AMRI Hospital fire in Kolkata, has alleged harassment by the ruling Trinamool Congress when she went to the city to launch her book recently.

Speaking to India Today, the author of 'The Antagonists', Tina Biswas said: "She (Mamata Banerjee) sent two men to my event at the Oxford Bookstore in Park Street, Kolkata. There were these two men standing throughout the event at the book store, who were constantly staring at me and looking suspicious. They looked shifty."

Tina Biswas said the two men didn't have anything to do with the event and neither did they ask her anything during the launch or after it.

'The Antagonists' is a fictional account based on the devastating fire incident at the AMRI Hospital. The story is about Devi, the chief minister of West Bengal, and Sachin Lohia, owner of a hospital that was gutted in a fire that also killed over 100 patients.

In 2011, a deadly fire ripped through the AMRI Hospital in Kolkata's Dhakuria, where 89 patients died in the fire.

Speaking to IndiaToday.in, Tina Biswas said, "The incident was politicised and a judgment was passed against the owner of the hospital even before there was an investigation. The whole tragedy was politicised to suit the purpose of one person."

Asked to comment on the incident and the allegations, Trinamool Congress MP Sukhedu Sekhar, Ray said, "I am not aware of the incident and cannot comment on it but people are free to write anything they want to."

Tina Biswas' book is critical of the Mamata Banerjee government's handling of the crisis.

On March 20, at the Oxford Bookstore event, when Tina Biswas asked her associates about the two men and if they were part of the store or the PR agency, she was told they were Trinamool goons who were sent to watch her.

Intimidated and threatened, Tina Biswas then recalled another incident in Mamata Banerjee's Kolkata. The novelist said she was addressing a press conference at the Kolkata Press Club when even before the interaction could start, a man came up to her and verbally abused her for writing against Mamata Banerjee.

The two incidents led her to feel all the more threatened at a time when a Bengali film, also critical of the Mamata Banerjee government, was pulled off theatres in the state ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Bhobishyoter Bhoot (Ghost of the Future), directed by Anik Dutta, took a dig at Mamata Banerjee's style of functioning and was unofficially banned. It was only after a public outcry that theatres in Kolkata have started screening the film again.

ALSO READ | Trinamool vs BJP in Didi's West Bengal

ALSO READ | Saradha probe: Very serious revelations in CBI report on former Kolkata police chief, says SC

ALSO WATCH | Modi govt spreading anarchy in Bengal, says Mamata Banerjee