All The Unanswered Questions Around West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee's Head Injury

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has, once again, suffered an injury days before polls.

In circumstances shrouded in a fair bit of mystery, Banerjee fell inside her bedroom at her modest residence in South Kolkata’s Kalighat early Thursday (14 March) evening. 

The ‘fall’ happened a little after 6.30 pm, and Banerjee was wheeled into Bengal’s premier super-specialty SSKM Hospital an hour later.

The distance between her Harish Chatterjee Street residence and the hospital is 1.4 kilometres and would take barely five minutes to cover for a VVIP convoy. 

It is learnt that the chief minister was entering her bedroom when she fell down and hit her forehead at the sharp edge of a wooden cabinet. She suffered an injury on the bridge of her nose as well. 

Her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, was present at his aunt’s residence when she fell. She was taken to the hospital later in his vehicle.

After she was admitted, she was photographed lying on a bed with her eyes closed and a trickle of blood from the gash on her forehead snaking its way down to her chin. 

But it was over how she fell that generated a lot of speculation and controversy.

SSKM Hospital director Manimoy Bandopadhyay read out the first medical bulletin around 11 pm, about three-and-half hours after Mamata Banerjee was brought to the hospital with the bleeding wound and about 75 minutes after she left the hospital for her residence. 

“The chief minister reported to the hospital around 7.30 pm after a fall at her home due to some push from behind. She had a cerebral concussion and a sharp cut over her forehead and nose, which were bleeding profusely,” the SSKM Director said. 

The chief minister’s sister-in-law Kajari — wife of Mamata Banerjee’s brother Kartik — who also resides in the Chief Minister’s extended house on Harish Chatterjee Street echoed the SSKM Director. Kajari Banerjee, who is also a Trinamool Congress Councillor of Kolkata Municipal Corporation, had accompanied the Chief Minister to the hospital in Abhishek’s vehicle. 

Speaking in Bengali, she told reporters at SSKM Hospital that Mamata Banerjee fell down after a dhakka (push) from behind. “I came to know that she (Mamata Banerjee) fell after a dhakka from behind,” Kajari Banerjee told reporters. 

The obvious question cropped up immediately: who pushed Mamata Banerjee inside her residence? Since she fell down while entering her bedroom, it had to be a family member or one of the trusted househelps who pushed her. 

Few, apart from her immediate family members and househelps, have access to the Chief Minister’s bedroom. Even the closest aides of Mamata Banerjee are allowed access only to her private study, and not her bedroom. 

Realising that this could spiral into a major controversy, the SSKM Director (obviously on instructions of the Chief Minister herself or her family members or party seniors) offered a lame clarification of his earlier “some push from behind” statement. 

“I did not mean that the chief minister was pushed by someone. I meant to say, when someone falls, there is this feeling of being pushed,” the SSKM Director clarified. 

Everyone clammed up after that, and no explanations were forthcoming from the family or party after that. 

Family members had, before this, clarified that the Chief Minister did not fall due to any dizziness. 

Apart from a huge contingent of armed policemen who guard her residence and the entire locality, a medical team is always on standby at Harish Chatterjee Street. This team — comprising at least one doctor and paramedics, as well as an ambulance equipped with medical emergency equipment — is present round-the-clock in the area. 

So why did this medical team not attend to the Chief Minister immediately? Why was her wound not dressed before she was taken to the SSKM Hospital?

Even if the medical team was not present, there are a few private clinics with paramedics in the locality. Could they not have been summoned to attend to the Chief Minister before she was taken to the hospital?

The wound that the Chief Minister suffered would, in any normal household with a first-aid kit, have been cleaned and dressed. Why was this not done by the Chief Minister’s family members? 

The circulation of photos of Mamata Banerjee lying on a hospital bed with a bleeding wound by the Trinamool Congress (see this post on X) has raised eyebrows. Skeptics have even wondered if the wound was cleaned and dressed, but the dressing taken off after she reached the SSKM Hospital, to allow someone to photograph a bleeding Banerjee?

It is out of the question for a VVIP like a chief minister to be admitted to a hospital with a bleeding wound and the wound to be left unattended. 

By the SSKM Hospital authorities’ own admission, a multi-disciplinary medical board that included specialists in neurosurgery, neuromedicine, cardiology, general medicine and general surgery was set up before Mamata Banerjee reached the hospital. 

A number of paramedics would also have been readied to attend to the Chief Minister immediately after she reached the hospital. Why, then, did nobody bother to dress Mamata Banerjee’s wound or clean the trickle of blood from the wound that had flowed down her nose, upper lip and chin? 

Especially since, as was evident from the photos that the Trinamool Congress circulated, the blood had dried and wasn’t obviously fresh. 

And if, by the accounts of her family members, Mamata Banerjee suffered the fall around 6.30 pm, why did it take her family members (including her nephew and heir apparent Abhishek) about an hour to take her to SSKM Hospital which is barely five minutes’ drive away? 

What happened between the time Mamata Banerjee fell and the time she was taken to Abhishek’s vehicle to be taken to the SSKM Hospital? What were her family members doing or discussing during those 60 minutes or so? 

Mamata Banerjee underwent various tests, including ECG, CT Scan and MRI after her wounds on her forehead and nose were stitched — three stitches on her forehead and one on her nose. All the tests came clean. 

She was released from the hospital around 9.45 pm and was back at her residence within a few minutes with a bandaged head. 

There is little doubt that Mamata Banerjee will keep the bandage around her forehead till the Lok Sabha elections are over. 

The Bengal Chief Minister has a history of leveraging her ‘injuries’ to garner public sympathy during election campaigns.  

She suffered a ligament injury on her left foot while campaigning in Nandigram in March 2021 before the Assembly elections. She initially alleged that Opposition workers had attacked her, but fell silent when videos of the door of the SUV slamming on her feet, while she was standing on the vehicle’s footboard, emerged (read this and this). 

She got a plaster cast on her left foot and campaigned all over the state in a wheelchair. Orthopaedists and medical experts had, at that time, doubted the severity of her wounds and the need for a plaster cast, or the Chief Minister confining herself to a wheelchair when she could walk perfectly well. 

Nonetheless, an injured, wheelchair-bound Mamata Banerjee campaigning tirelessly in the early summer of 2021 became one of the enduring images of the Assembly elections that year.