Vowing that the land of Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Subhas Chandra Bose and Matanigi Hazra would not be allowed to be bloodied, Banerjee in a message to a section of Kolkata-based intellectuals said, “I appeal to those in Kolkata giving statements kindly do not to give any encouragement to Maoists. This is my request to you.

They have signed a letter that has condemned the police action against Ambikesh Mahapatra, the Jadavpur chemistry professor, and Partho Sarothi Ray, a molecular biologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohanpur.

“We will launch in Bangalore in the next 30 days, after that in Pune and then Chandigarh,” said Sanjay Kapoor, chief executive of India and South Asia. The network has been rolled out in partnership with Chinese equipment vendor ZTE and is theoretically capable of 100 megabits per second speeds.

The autorickshaw drivers resorted to brickbatting which damaged buses. They also forced passengers to get out of buses.

Children on way to schools and elderly people had a harrowing time as they were forced to walk to their destinations or back home.

Autorickshaws in the city and outskirts operate on specific routes and operators are often accused by passengers of ill behaviour and of charging fare at will.

The roadblocks, which began at around 10 am in the peak office hours, were lifted after intervention by the police.

At Phulbagan, Trinamool Congress MLA Paresh Pal forced the autorickshaw operators, who were indulging in rowdyism, to lift the blockade.

No one was arrested in connection with the blockades, the police said.

The airline, burdened by a debt of over Rs 7,000 crore, also did not rule out laying off some staff saying a decision on the issue would depend on various decisions to be taken by the government and its bankers about funding and related issues.

“The first meeting of the IPL-V, was held today (Tuesday) between the representatives of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), Cricket Associations of Bengal (CAB) and security officers of the IPL-V. We discussed in detail about the security aspects,” said Joint Commissioner (headquarters) Jawed Shamim.

After the just-released Kahaani where Vidya Balan traversed through the length and breadth of the city searching for her missing husband, two other big-budget films, due for release later this year, have focused on the metropolis and West Bengal.

The story so far is that the film has a scene where the main protagonist Vidya Bagchi is pushed in front of a speeding train; the Metro board found this scene objectionable owing to the number of suicide cases already registered and the impact it may cause.

The government, however, made heavy police arrangements on the streets to thwart any untoward incidents.

The reason is obvious. The CM had told media early on in the case that the whole rape was “concocted” to “malign” her government and that the details would be revealed soon.

The details were revealed and the Chief Minister has been caught on very much the wrong foot. The story was not fabricated. The woman had not lied. She had been lied to by the men who befriended her at the nightclub and gave her fake names. But the assault had happened.

Now the spotlight has shifted to the CM herself. Why had she felt compelled to speak out on a case that was under investigation? Why had she not stopped her cabinet ministers from going on television shows to blame the victim for being out on her own that late at a nightclub?

Even her Trinamool colleagues are red-faced though none will go on the record. “This episode has not gone down well with the people and has hurt her image,” an unnamed Trinamool leader told The Telegraph.

Mamata, as an opposition leader, had built up her political reputation as the champion of the victim. In the process she sees herself as the permanent victim. As CM she is becoming a victim of her own paranoia, convinced that everything that happens in the state is somehow about her, and that everyone from her allies in the Congress to her opponents in the Left Front are out to get her.

“At a broader level Mamata has, since taking charge, harped unfailingly on the conspiracy refrain to tackle any dispute, be it sharing Teesta waters with Bangladesh or setting up a Lokayukta,” editorialises the Times of India.

Mamata, of all people, should have understood the vulnerability of a single woman out on her own, who seems to flout the middle class mores of Bengali society. The CPI-M leaders had gleefully made digs at her gender and singleness when she was an opposition leader. She has been compared to a “prostitute” and  disparaged as a “Kalighater mynah” (Kalighat is her family home, mynah is an overly talkative bird). A top Communist leader even snidely asked the media “Onar eto bukey laagey keno bolun to (Why does she keep getting hurt on the chest so much?)” after Mamata complained about being beaten up in clashes with police at Singur. “The CPI-M leveraged gender as a weapon to trivialise, even vulgarise, their rhetoric of attack on the Trinamool Congress president, her status as a single woman without the bulwark of exotic lineage or formidable rank of wealth and class shielding her,” writes Monobina Gupta in Didi, her political biography of Mamata.

Mamata once lambasted the CPI-M for using rape as a political weapon. The Singur agitation caught fire after the murder of a 16-year old woman. Mamata had fought tooth and nail for a CBI inquiry after the CPI-M was accused of launching a smear campaign accusing the young woman’s father of raping her. Now Mamata finds herself accused of inserting politics into a rape case. As a woman heading the government, she does not have to be a feminist. She does not even have to show any special sensitivity to women’s issues. But there is no need to re-victimise the victim.

Mamata’s silence is uncharacteristic for the blunt plain-spoken politician that she is. She might well have made an honest mistake in this case. But to get out of this mess that she herself created, she must do something even more uncharacteristic. The state is watching.