Indian State West Bengal Tense After Minister Arrest

Protesters have staged impromptu demonstrations and set up rail and road blockades in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal including its capital, Kolkata, on Thursday. 



Supporters of the state's ruling Trinamool Congress party are protesting the arrest of a state minister on corruption charges, accusing India's central government of hatching a conspiracy to malign the West Bengal government. 



Transport and Sport Minister Madan Mitra was arrested for alleged involvement in a company that ran a large ponzi scheme -- a type of financial scam that defrauds public investors -- and siphoned off 150 billion Indian rupees from investors before going bust. 



Mitra was arrested on Friday when he went to the offices of the Central Bureau of Investigation for a pre-arranged questioning on his alleged role in the scam. He evaded the government agency's earlier attempts to question him by pleading ill-health. 



"The central sleuths are behaving like hooligans. The Union government is playing a dangerous game," said West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee immediately after the arrest.



Banerjee has a bitter relationship with the central government's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, known as the BJP. 



"I am telling the Prime Minister, arrest me first," she said. 



The Bharatiya Janata Party's national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh responded to Bannerjee by saying:  "The footprints of the criminal are slowly leading to the doorsteps of the chief minister."



Mitra is the first serving minister of West Bengal to ever be arrested. The Central Bureau of Investigation's role in the arrest is a sign of the federal agency's increasing power; it has investigated charges of corruption against numerous senior government officials in recent years, leading to the imprisonment of former chief ministers of the eastern state of Bihar and southern state of Tamil Nadu. 



Critics of West Bengal's Trinamool Congress government see the arrest as a "bold step." 



"It would help restore the people's faith on the system of law enforcement," commented writer Bolan Gangopadhyay.



The scandal was compounded when a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) alleged in India's upper chamber of parliament, the Rajya Sabha, that money from the ponzi scheme had been used to fund international terror networks. 



Some political observers believe that accusing the Trinamool Congress of links to "Jihadi" militants is a ploy by the Bharatiya Janata Party to discredit the Trinamool Congress at the next election. 



A Hindu nationalist group linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), has, for its golden jubilee celebrations, employed the local slogan of "Build a Bengal free from Jihadi fundamentalism."



www.aa.com.tr/en - West Bengal