A century and counting: List of key TMC leaders arrested in a month of new Bengal regime

Regime changes are normal in democracies, but hardly any of them resembles the bloodbath that is currently on in the Trinamool Congress (TMC) that held power in West Bengal for 15 years.

It’s hard to believe that it has been only a month since the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari took charge as the chief minister of the state on May 9. And in this time, the now-in-Opposition TMC has split into two in the state assembly, the mayor and several other leaders have resigned, its MPs are in talks to switch over to the saffron party, its leaders are being pelted with eggs and shoes, and more than a hundred leaders and workers have been arrested, with new FIRs being registered every other day.

While we cannot say for sure if such a drastic U-turn of fortunes is a record for an Indian political party or not, here is a list of the major TMC leaders who have been arrested in the past month alone.

Sujit Bose

The former state fire services minister was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on May 11 for his alleged involvement in a multi-crore municipal recruitment scam. The ED arrested him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) following a 10-hour interrogation.

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The investigators alleged that between 2014 and 2016, Bose abused his position as the vice-chairman of the South Dum Dum Municipality to unlawfully recommend around 150 job seekers for various municipal positions. According to the ED, Bose allegedly took substantial financial kickbacks.

The scam is allegedly linked to corporate entities like those managed by promoter Ayan Sil, who allegedly manipulated OMR examination sheets to intentionally fail qualified candidates and clear unmeritorious candidates who paid bribes. The ED's investigative framework reveals that the municipal scam spanned at least 17 municipalities in West Bengal, involving over 1,000 fraudulent employee recruitments.

On Monday (June 8), the Calcutta High Court denied an urgent hearing for Bose’s petition, which challenged the validity of his arrest.

Jahangir “Pushpa” Khan

Facing seven separate FIRs at Falta Police Station in South 24-Parganas district, Jahangir Khan made headlines days before the West Bengal elections in April by comparing himself to Pushpa, the popular anti-hero from the eponymous film, who “never bows” to anyone.

However, his bravado evaporated when his party was routed in the elections and his constituency Falta was set for a repoll later in May amid widespread reports of malpractice. He quickly withdrew his nomination and deserted the party but could not avoid the inevitable.

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Khan went on the run after Calcutta High Court vacated his interim protection order on May 26. The charges against him include massive election irregularities, extortion, land grabbing, and voter intimidation. On Monday (June 8), he was tracked and arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) while attempting to cross the India-Nepal border in north Bengal.

Jay Prakash Majumdar

The TMC state vice-president and spokesperson faces charges of molestation, criminal intimidation, and property fraud in a case registered at Bidhannagar North Police Station.

Majumdar, a formerly suspended BJP leader, had been allegedly occupying a prime residential property in Salt Lake (E-337) for over 14 years, using it as a commercial office. He allegedly entered as a tenant 12 years ago but stopped paying rent altogether.

When his landlady issued legal eviction notices, allegedly an intense argument broke out. The landlady lodged a complaint alleging that Majumdar physically harassed, molested, and threatened her to maintain control of the house.

He was detained and subsequently arrested on June 3 after local residents staged protests surrounding the house.

Saokat Molla

He was the subject of the post viral poll campaign song that hit social media in the run-up to the polls. While Saokat Molla took offence at being labelled maachh chor (fish thief) and threatened to seek legal recourse, he is himself in National Investigation Agency (NIA) custody under federal anti-terror laws in the high-profile Bhangar bomb blast case.

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Saokat is allegedly the main conspirator in the blast, which occurred during the high-voltage run-up to the elections. The NIA took up the case following a mandate from the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the anti-terror agency’s evidence reportedly reveals that Molla not only directed his associates to manufacture illegal crude bombs but also instructed them to actively tamper with the crime scene after the accidental explosion to hide casualties and debris.

After evading multiple raids at his properties in Moukhali and Jeebantala, he was arrested from a hideout in South 24-Parganas district on June 5. His son, Imran, has also been detained in the same case.

Sujoy Hazra

The former Midnapur district leader and former MLA is accused of running an institutionalized land scam, forging land titles, and demanding heavy “syndicate” extortion taxes from private developers.

Hazra was arrested on Sunday (June 7) in Paschim Medinipur on charges of extortion and forgery. Angry locals pelted eggs at the police vehicle transporting him.

Bappaditya Dasgupta

This influential KMC councillor is accused of leveraging political muscle to extort local business owners and street vendors under the guise of “party protection fees”. He was arrested on June 6 on charges of extortion, criminal trespass, intimidation, and attempted arson.

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Hundreds of people gathered outside Patuli Police Station chanting “chor, chor” (thief, thief) and hurled eggs at Dasgupta as police escorted him to Alipore court.

Sushanta Kumar Ghosh

Sushanta Kumar Ghosh, the councillor for Ward 108 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, has been named in an FIR and an extortion case, alongside facing allegations of collecting nearly Rs 3 crore from hawkers and traders at Anandapur in Kolkata’s eastern fringes. He is facing non-bailable warrants for aggravated extortion and running illegal construction cartels.

Ghosh is currently a fugitive. State tracking systems reportedly placed him in Puri, Odisha, where he narrowly evaded an intercepting police team. His personal driver was arrested on-site and is undergoing interrogation regarding Ghosh’s current hideout. Ghosh stepped down from his position as the chairman of KMC borough XII in late May.

Debo Prasad Bag and Rajib Banerjee

The duo are accused in the Birbhum ration and rice siphoning case registered under the Essential Commodities Act and sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for fraud and criminal breach of trust.

Bag, a former Kalna MLA, was caught following an unannounced raid at his property, which allegedly revealed a massive stockpile of state-funded public relief materials meant for distribution to disaster victims.

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Separately, panchayat officer and prominent regional party organiser Rajib Banerjee was caught managing a black-market ring in Birbhum that allegedly siphoned away tonnes of subsidized rice meant for low-income families via the public distribution system.

Rajib is accused of misusing his institutional position to run an illegal ration rice sale ring. Investigative agencies allege he siphoned away tonnes of government-subsidized PDS (Public Distribution System) food grains meant for poor families and sold them directly to private mills for a massive profit margin.

He was arrested by state agencies from Birbhum amid the growing political chaos.

Brahmananda and Sannyasi Manna

Accused of weaponizing government welfare programmes, the duo allegedly systematically withheld the release of standard wages under the federal MGNREGA scheme and central housing funds (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana) unless the impoverished beneficiaries paid upfront “cut money” ranging from 10 to 20 per cent back to the local TMC fund. Their arrests followed severe local public revolts where villagers blockaded their offices.

Rebel in the dock: Paritosh Dutta

The TMC rebels are not entirely clean themselves. Some of the rebel leaders faces cases too, ranging from arms smuggling to extortion. One of them is Paritosh Dutta, a highly influential regional leader who is an accused in the Surendranath College arms case, which is being investigated by the Kolkata Police.

Dutta is implicated in an arms smuggling and illegal weapon hoarding racket linked to a student union hostel at Surendranath College in Kolkata. Intelligence reports reportedly connected him to supplying crude weaponry used during post-poll clashes.

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Dutta was tracked down by the police and arrested in Bardhaman, where he was allegedly attempting to hide after breaking ties with the Mamata Banerjee-led faction.

Other arrests

Other prominent arrests include former MLAs Tapan Chattopadhyay (Purbasthali North) in corruption, extortion, and post‑poll violence cases, Khokon Das (Burdwan South) on corruption and extortion charges, and Asit Mazumder (Chinsurah) on corruption/extortion charges, along with several municipal leaders and councillors from Hooghly, North 24-Parganas, and Nadia.

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Prominent among local leaders are Tilak Kumar Chakraborty from Haldia, arrested on June 4 in an alleged job fraud case, and Bidhannagar Municipality councillors Samrat Barua, Sushobhan Mandal, Samaresh Chakraborty, Ranjan Poddar, and Partha Verma, all facing charges of extortion and intimidation.

In early June, West Bengal DGP Siddh Nath Gupta stated that over 200 FIRs had been filed in connection with post‑poll violence. Police arrested hundreds of people and placed more than a thousand under preventive detention.

Abhishek Banerjee (facing FIR)

The TMC National General Secretary and MP, who was viciously attacked with eggs and shoes in Sonarpur on May 30, faces an FIR for allegedly provocative campaign speeches.

The FIR was registered on May 15 at the Bidhannagar Cyber Crime Police Station by activist Rajib Sarkar. Abhishek has filed a petition in Calcutta High Court seeking to quash the criminal proceedings, calling them a politically motivated narrative.

Abhishek has also been asked to appear before the ED on June 15 in connection with the primary teachers’ recruitment scam. The probe alleges that bribes of Rs 5–15 lakh were paid for jobs between 2014 and 2021. Assets worth Rs 641 crore have already been attached in related cases.

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He was also questioned in 2022 regarding a Rs 1,352-crore illegal coal mining scandal. His ties to political consultancy firm I-PAC are also under scrutiny.

Ongoing investigations

These are apart from the ongoing cases against Shahjahan Sheikh and Partha Chatterjee.

Shahjahan, the controversial Sandeshkhali leader, is facing combined ED and CBI prosecution for running a cross-border fish-pond grabbing cartel, dynamic laundering of public ration funds, and orchestrating a violent armed ambush on federal ED officials who arrived to search his premises.

Former minister Partha Chatterjee is in jail on multi-crore money-laundering charges directly tied to the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) scam, where teaching and non-teaching state jobs were systematically sold to unqualified candidates in exchange for cash.