Kolkata:
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday lost her cool and stormed out of an interactive TV session in Kolkata when members of audience asked her about the arrest of a professor for forwarding a cartoon lampooning her.
"It is not a cartoon. We love the cartoon. Cartoon is a different thing. He is a CPI-M man, he misused the e-mail of his society people without their consent. He forwarded it to 60 people," Ms Banerjee said angrily when a student from Jadavpur University asked her about the arrest of Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra.
Claiming that the professor was not an intellectual, but a "CPI-M agent", she told the moderator that "after election CPI-M had sent thousands of CDs, if you are a woman and if you see them, you will feel ashamed. CPI-M and Maoists are working together."
"...The message in the cartoon which contained the word 'vanish' is a murder conspiracy and a plot supported by CPI-M.
What he has done is a cybercrime. It is not a cartoon, it is a political conspiracy to murder me," Ms Banerjee claimed.
Stating that her government believed in democracy, she said, "Otherwise, he (Ambikesh) should have been in custody.
He has done a wrong thing. He misused the e-mail. I know that Maoist people and CPI-M are putting up these questions," the chief minister told an interactive session organised by news channel.