A team of Kolkata Police personnel, including officers in plain clothes, entered ‘Shantiniketan’—the multi-storeyed residence of Trinamool Congress (TMC) National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee—on Harish Mukherjee Road on Monday afternoon, May 25, 2026. The sudden arrival of a heavy police deployment generated intense public drama and political speculation, with local residents initially fearing a raid following a recent building plan notice served by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. However, the brief operation concluded not with an arrest, but with officers carrying away a large television monitor and hard disks from the property.
Senior Kolkata Police officials quickly moved to downplay the incident, describing the visit as a strictly routine official exercise with no law-and-order implications. Authorities clarified that the electronic equipment removed was an LED monitor linked to entrance security scanners and external CCTV grids. Because the hardware belonged to the state government, the department decided to retrieve it following a major scale-down of the Diamond Harbour MP’s security apparatus. Banerjee had been under Z-plus protection—the highest tier of security—since 2015, but his cover was abruptly dismantled following the recent change of guard in the West Bengal government.
The hushed manner of the retrieval drew sharp criticism from the opposition benches. TMC spokesperson Saket Gokhale lambasted the deployment on social media, labeling it a display of “pathetic sensationalism” driven by political vendetta. Gokhale argued that while only a few hands were required to remove the leftover government scanning devices, dozens of officers were deployed to create an unnecessary public spectacle outside the leader’s home. The removal of the surveillance monitor marks the final phase of the security withdrawal, which has already seen the removal of street barricades, guardrails, and a stationed bomb disposal unit from the perimeter.
