KOLKATA – Mahua Moitra, a member of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), has responded to a FIR filed against her in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, with a harsh jab at the BJP, saying, “idiots don’t understand idioms.” After a speech in which Moitra allegedly suggested in Bengali that “the first thing you should do is cut Amit Shah’s head and put it on your table” if Home Minister Amit Shah doesn’t stop people from coming in from Bangladesh, the FIR was registered.
The Mana Camp police station in Raipur filed the FIR under Sections 196 (promoting hostility between groups based on religion, race, etc.) and 197 (making false statements that are harmful to national unity) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
Moitra said that people got her words wrong and that the Bengali phrase she used was an idiom. She said, “In Bengali, we say ‘lojjay matha kata chhe,’ which means ‘you are so ashamed that you can cut your own head off.'” “‘When we say matha kata jawa, matha ke tebi le rakha,’ it means taking responsibility and being accountable,” she said.
Moitra used English phrases to make her point further clearer. She claimed that when the Lok Sabha results came out and the BJP’s “abki baar, 400 paar” campaign failed, the international media stated it was a “slap in the face” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Did someone go up to the Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji and hit him in the face? “No,” she said. She also said that the expression “heads will roll” is not a literal beheading but a way to say that people will be held accountable. “It’s a metaphor for being responsible,” she remarked.
Moitra further said that the BJP was trying to make her a “political victim,” saying, “Every time this happens, the party does this ‘stupidity of making a heroine out of me’.” She brought up the time she was kicked out of Parliament and then won and came back. “Every time you do this to me, it doesn’t help you politically; it just makes me into Joan of Arc,” she said. She ended by ordering the BJP to “put your FIRs where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Moitra also criticized the police in Chhattisgarh, saying they filed a bogus case based on a bad Google translation. She said that the FIR wrongly translated her Bengali phrase “matha ke tebi le” as “gala kaat diya,” which means “beheaded.” Moitra said she would fight the charge in court and warned that it would lead to “another slap in the face and then more heads will roll.” She also talked about a time when she had to go to the Chhattisgarh High Court to get a case against migrant laborers from her district thrown out.