SILCHAR/KOLKATA: An eight-member Trinamool Congress delegation that went to Assam following the exclusion of 40 lakh names from the final draft of the NRC was detained at Silchar airport moments after the leaders landed there on Thursday.

Starting at 2pm, what unfolded was an eight-hour-long fracas packed with bitter exchanges between Assam Police and the TMC leaders with cops slapping criminal charges on West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee for fomenting enmity on grounds of religion, race and place of birth. At the time of going to the press, the delegation members were still at the Silchar airport.

The incident evoked strong responses from Trinamool and BJP, from Assam to Bengal. Mamata held that the country was passing through a “Super Emergency” in which Trinamool MPs were being “beaten up” inside the airport.

“Our MPs had gone there to hold a convention of Assam citizens. The Assam Police didn’t allow them to step out of the airport.

Some of the members have been beaten up by the police. Do they have something to hide? Is this political vendetta? All this happened after Union home minister Rajnath Singh assured that there will be no harassment,” the CM said in Kolkata after returning from Delhi.The TMC team had reached around 1.30 pm to attend a citizen’s convention in Silchar and was also supposed to visit Nagaon and Guwahati on Friday. The team included six MPs — Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Ratna De Nag, Nadimul Haque, Arpita Ghosh and Mamata Thakur — and Bengal urban development minister Firhad Hakim and MLA Mahua Moitra.

“The DG and everyone else from the police were at the airport. Our chief whip in the Rajya Sabha, who has a pacemaker, was roughed up by the police. Mahua Moitra was roughed up and hit by the police, as were Mamata Thakur and Dr Kakoli Ghosh.

