Five years after Mamata Banerjee’s Nandigram injury became a defining moment of the 2021 Bengal election, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has ordered a fresh probe, citing a medical report that found no fracture or dislocation.
BY PC Bureau
October 3, 2026: A five-year-old injury has suddenly returned to the centre of West Bengal politics, just days before Nandigram goes to the polls.
Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has ordered a fresh look at the injuries suffered by Mamata Banerjee during the 2021 Assembly election campaign, accusing the former chief minister of using a “false propaganda” to portray the incident as an attack. At Nabanna, and earlier at Birulia Bazaar — where Banerjee was injured on March 10, 2021 — Adhikari displayed a medical report from the Bangur Institute of Neurosciences dated March 11, 2021, which, according to him, recorded no fracture or dislocation.
Adhikari has said the state CID will examine the matter, but that further details will be disclosed after the model code of conduct ends following counting for the Nandigram bypoll on October 9.
The timing inevitably gives the controversy its political edge. Nandigram votes on October 6, and it is the constituency that transformed the Adhikari-Banerjee rivalry into one of Bengal’s defining political contests. Adhikari defeated Banerjee there in the 2021 Assembly election after she had moved to Nandigram to challenge him on his home turf.
The question now is not simply what happened to Banerjee’s leg five years ago. It is why a medical record from that episode has become the subject of a government inquiry immediately before another Nandigram election.
There is an important distinction that should not be lost in the political argument. No fracture is not the same thing as no injury.
A medical examination finding no broken bone or dislocation does not, by itself, establish that a person was uninjured. Sprains, contusions, soft-tissue injuries and other trauma can occur without a fracture. Indeed, the issue in 2021 was never confined to whether Banerjee had broken a bone. The larger controversy concerned her claim that she had been attacked by several people while campaigning in Nandigram.
Banerjee had alleged immediately after the incident that four or five men had pushed against her and that a car door had struck her leg. She was subsequently admitted to SSKM Hospital in Kolkata and was seen campaigning in a wheelchair after her discharge.
The Election Commission investigated the incident at the time. Its special observers, Ajay Nayak and Vivek Dubey, inspected the site and submitted a report. The observers found no evidence of a planned or premeditated attack. Contemporary reports described their conclusion as pointing to an accident or security-related lapse rather than an organised assault.
The Election Commission nevertheless did not treat the episode as inconsequential. It acted against senior officials responsible for Banerjee’s security, including her director of security, and against officials in East Midnapore, citing failures in security arrangements. The Commission’s official record said it had considered the reports of the Chief Secretary and the special observers before ordering action.
That history matters because it separates two questions that are now being pushed together: Was Banerjee injured? And was she deliberately attacked?
The first cannot be answered simply by pointing to the absence of a fracture. The second was investigated by the Election Commission in 2021, which found no evidence of a planned attack. The two conclusions are not contradictory.
Adhikari is entitled to challenge the political narrative that emerged from the incident. If the evidence shows that Banerjee or her party knowingly exaggerated the nature of her injuries, that would be a legitimate subject for public scrutiny. But such a conclusion would require more than a report saying there was no fracture.
The government would need to establish what the medical records actually documented, what treatment Banerjee received, whether subsequent medical assessments recorded soft-tissue or other injuries, and whether anything in those records contradicts the account given by her at the time.
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That is where the proposed CID inquiry should be tested.
If the government has fresh evidence — a medical record that contradicts subsequent claims, contradictory hospital documentation, witness testimony or other material that was unavailable or overlooked in 2021 — it should place that evidence in the public domain. If, on the other hand, the central document is a medical report that was available within days of the incident, the obvious question is what new fact has emerged after five years to justify reopening the matter.
There is also a larger issue of priorities. A state government has enormous discretion over where its investigative agencies devote their time and resources. West Bengal continues to deal with contentious issues involving recruitment, political violence, organised local networks and allegations of corruption. Against that backdrop, reopening a five-year-old campaign injury days before a Nandigram election will inevitably be viewed through a political lens.
That does not make the inquiry illegitimate. Nor does the timing prove that it is politically motivated. But the government carries a higher burden of demonstrating that the exercise is evidence-led rather than election-led.
The strongest way to settle the controversy would therefore be unusually simple: put the complete medical record, not merely a selected page, in the public domain; explain what injuries were diagnosed and treated; publish the basis on which the CID has decided to reopen the matter; and distinguish clearly between the medical question and the allegation of a planned attack.
The 2021 episode already produced an official finding on the latter. The Election Commission found no evidence of a premeditated attack while simultaneously identifying serious security failures.
Five years later, a government may legitimately revisit unanswered questions. But it should not confuse the absence of a fracture with proof that an injury did not exist, or turn an old medical document into evidence of a conspiracy that the document itself does not establish.
Nandigram has always been more than a constituency in Bengal politics. It is a symbol, a personal battleground and a recurring source of political theatre. The challenge for the government now is to ensure that the investigation into what happened to Banerjee’s ankle does not become another chapter in that theatre.
If there is new evidence, let it speak. If there is not, the public deserves to know why an old wound has suddenly become a matter of state business.
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