“The scar tells you I’ve been through something. The eyes tell you I’m nowhere near done.” - That is the line Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee put over a close-up Instagram story on Wednesday - a tight shot of his left eye, the old scar running down the cheek beneath it, the stare held long enough to look like a statement rather than a selfie.
The post lands in a week when his personal assistant Sumit Roy is in CID custody in the Salboni land case, after police walked into Banerjee’s Kalighat house to arrest him. It also lands months after a pre-dawn search of the same address, a string of CID and ED summons, a public stone-and-egg attack in Sonarpur, a party that has split in the Assembly and in Parliament, and a court fight just to leave the country for eye treatment. The image and the caption do not name any of that. They do not have to. In Bengal politics right now, the scar and the eye already carry a file.
Banerjee’s left eye is not new political material. In 2016 he was injured in a road accident on the Durgapur Expressway. He has had surgery in India and later follow-up care in the United States, including at Johns Hopkins. After the 2026 Assembly defeat, travel restrictions attached to a speech-related case turned that medical history into a courtroom argument.
The Calcutta High Court refused to let him fly unless he first appeared before a medical board at SSKM Hospital. He declined. The Supreme Court later set the High Court order aside and allowed a three-week trip, with conditions: diplomatic passport, itinerary shared with investigators, return date on record. He left. The story posted this week is the face that went with him - and the face that, his party says, has been a target before.
After the Sonarpur incident on 30 May, when a crowd pelted stones and eggs and shouted “chor, chor” as he tried to visit a family linked to post-poll violence, Banerjee said his clothes were torn and his spectacles broken. Mamata Banerjee claimed attackers tried to damage his eyes and that a helmet saved his life. The scar in Wednesday’s frame sits in that overlap - old injury, new heat, same side of the face.
On 10 September, CID and STF teams arrested Sumit Roy from 121 Kalighat Road - Banerjee’s residence-cum-party address - minutes after the Supreme Court refused him further pre-arrest protection in the Salboni matter of alleged land scam. Investigators allege illegal conversion and sale of government land with forged papers and point to large transactions in Roy’s accounts. Roy had already been questioned for tens of hours across multiple sittings. A Midnapore court later sent him to CID custody.
That arrest was the second act. In June, police from Salboni, with Kolkata Police and central forces, arrived at the same house before dawn looking for Roy. Locks were broken. The search ran for hours. The seizure list, TMC leaders later waved, said nil. The Calcutta High Court asked the state to explain the timing and ordered CCTV and recordings preserved. TMC called it vendetta. The government called it investigation.
In the same stretch Banerjee himself was summoned and grilled - CID on alleged inflammatory campaign remarks and on a disputed Assembly-signature paper; ED in the school-jobs case; more notices stacked on the calendar. He has said he will cooperate. The agencies have said cooperation is incomplete. The house has been both home and crime-scene adjacent.
None of this is happening inside a stable party. The 2026 West Bengal verdict broke TMC’s fifteen-year hold. The BJP crossed the 200-seat mark. Mamata Banerjee lost Bhabanipur. Within days, a majority of the party’s MLAs lined up behind expelled legislator Ritabrata Banerjee and took the legislature party. In Delhi, most TMC Lok Sabha MPs peeled away toward the NDA. Rajya Sabha members quit. Municipal boards cracked, including in Diamond Harbour - Banerjee’s own parliamentary seat.
Cryptic posts from Banerjee are not new. He has used sailor-and-storm lines and cost-of-fighting quotes before party meetings. This one is tighter and more physical. The scar is evidence of a past event. The eyes are a claim about the next one.
Whether that next event is a political comeback, a legal defence, or simply finishing treatment and flying home on the date the Supreme Court recorded is left unsaid. The state government will read defiance. His remaining colleagues will read stamina. His critics will read a man who still believes the story is about him.
The photograph does not settle the Salboni case, the signature row, or the empty benches in the Assembly. It only insists that the face in the frame is still in the fight and that the fight, in his telling, is written under the eye as much as on the complaint sheet.
