Cops question Kabir as forces surround mosque event zone
Times of India | 6 December 2025
Behrampore: Over 3,500 cops, including RAF contingents drawn from Krishnagore, Siliguri, and Behrampore, have been deployed in Rejinagar and surrounding areas ahead of Bharatpur MLA Humayun Kabir's scheduled programme of laying the foundation stone for ‘Babri Masjid'. Two BSF companies have been kept on standby to secure National Highway-12 from Friday night.
On Friday evening, Kabir, suspended by Trinamool a day ago, was summoned to Rejinagar PS and questioned for hours by senior officers from Hariharpara, Rejinagar and Beldanga police stations.
Earlier in the day, a defiant Kabir supervised the pandal being erected for Saturday's event, and ordered 30,000 packets of biryani for his guests. He also met splinter groups of Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind and the All Bengal Imam Muazzin Association.
While addressing the first of many press conferences in the morning, Kabir said: "The main programme will start at noon. The Quran will be read for two hours. There will be no speeches, no political party representation, no political flags, and no political canards. I will be there with 2,000 volunteers. And everyone knows... this isn't a new thing. I declared this programme a year back."
His former party, however, saw politics behind Kabir's move. "There are BJP faces and then there are BJP masks," TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh told reporters in Kolkata. "We have nothing to say if people in their individual capacities build a temple, mosque or church on personal properties. But when such an otherwise normal religious act is done with the sole motive to attain specific political goals, we will object," he added.
"What we cannot grasp are the contradictions. His (Kabir's) love for Babri Masjid did not stop him from joining BJP in 2018. He says he will form a separate party but still queues up to attend CM Mamata Banerjee's meetings. This circuitous Congress-Trinamool-BJP-Trinamool route makes us suspect his real aim. His statements mirror BJP netas. They are the faces. However, they also use masks. And using these masks, BJP tries to drive a wedge in minority votes. In Bengal, and in Murshidabad, people have seen through these masks. They understand everything," Ghosh added.
Kabir on Friday reiterated that he would quit TMC on Dec 17 and form his own party on Dec 22.
In June, the MLA had claimed that AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisin had himself dialled him with an offer to join his party. Kabir said he had politely declined the offer. However, his fusillade against TMC and its netas gathered pace. While Kabir is among the most unpredictable of Murshidabad netas, view in TMC leadership is simple: The MLA's organizational footprint is largely confined to Bharatpur, and neighbouring Rejinagar, and his exit will pinch the party "in at most a seat or two".
Kabir made his entry into politics through Youth Congress in early '90s and won the Rejinagar seat in 2011 as a Congress candidate. A year later, he switched to TMC and was rewarded with a cabinet berth. Three years on, he was expelled for six years after publicly speaking against CM Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee. He contested the 2016 assembly polls as an Independent and lost. In 2018, he joined BJP and lost from Murshidabad in the 2019 LS election.
In 2021, as the six-year expulsion expired, he returned to TMC in time for the 2021 polls and won from Bharatpur. His second innings in the party, however, has been even more combustible than the first.