An official of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) was allegedly punched and his spectacles broken by an alleged Trinamool Congress functionary when he and other civic officials went to remove a stall that was illegally occupying a portion of a road in Parnasree, a neighbourhood in Behala.

The accused was arrested following a complaint by the KMC official who was
assaulted.

Calcutta mayor Firhad Hakim said any attack on a KMC official is an attack on the mayor himself.

“If a KMC official is being humiliated or attacked, it is equivalent to attacking me because I am heading the KMC. I am thankful to Kolkata Police for intervening. Our chief minister always says no one is beyond the law, which means whoever it is, if he has committed an offence, the law will take its course,” Hakim said on Wednesday.

The incident was reported from 42 Kazi Para, in Parnasree, on Tuesday evening when a KMC team, led by Birendra Krishna Bhakta, an assistant director in the solid waste management department –I of Borough XIV, went to remove a temporary shop that had encroached on a main road.

The KMC’s move was part of a drive the civic body has undertaken following instructions from chief minister Mamata Banerjee to make roads, footpaths and other public spaces free of encroachments.

Local Trinamool councillor (Ward 129) Sanhita Das, who is also chairperson of Borough XIV, said Bhakta and his team were in the process of removing the stall when the owner called someone over the phone and Avijit Moitra, a local Trinamool functionary, came to the spot in a rickshaw.

“Avijit Moitra got off the rickshaw and became violent towards Bhakta-babu without uttering a word. Everyone was shocked,” Das told Metro on Wednesday.

“We all know Bhakta-babu for so many years. He is a peace-loving person. Moitra punched him in the face, a blow that broke his spectacles. Everyone knows Moitra is a Trinamool Congress functionary for many years. That does not give him the right to hit someone, especially a government official on duty.”

Bhakta and his colleagues went to Vidyasagar State General Hospital and then to Parnasree police station to lodge a complaint against Moitra.

This newspaper could not contact Bhakta as his phone was switched off on Wednesday.

The police said they received Bhakta’s complaint around 6.10pm on Tuesday. “The accused abused and assaulted the complainant while he was discharging government duty and also damaged his glasses,” said a senior officer in the southwest division of Kolkata Police.

Moitra has been booked under sections of disrupting a government official
from performing his duty, causing voluntary hurt to a person, wrongful restraint and mischief.

The stall encroaching on the road is run by an elderly woman. She said she has
been running the stall for 40 years and that no one can remove her.

Councillor Das, citing a court order, said that “even if a person occupies a public space for 100 years, he or she cannot own that space”.