Mamata Banerjee breaks silence on Mahua Moitra row, says it will 'help her before election'

"Mahua Moitra's expulsion from Lok Sabha is being planned... but this will help her before the election," Banerjee said Thursday at an event in Kolkata.

"Now they have planned to target Mahua. She will become popular for three months. What she said inside... she will say outside. She will hold press conferences every day. What does she lose?"

Banerjee also ripped into the ruling BJP over the arrests of her party's MLAs, including Minister Jyotipriya Mallick, who was taken into custody this month in an alleged multi-crore ration scam.

"They have arrested four MLAs... think they can reduce our strength like this. We have also decided. If they defame four of us... there are cases of murder against them. I will put eight of them in jail," she said.

Prior to this short, but significant message, of support, Banerjee had refused to discuss the furore surrounding Moitra, who is accused of taking bribes, including Rs. 2 crores in cash, from businessman Darshan Hiranandani to ask questions targeting the Modi government in Parliament.

The BJP had earlier said Trinamool's silence on the matter reflects that the party has "dumped" Moitra and that Banerjee's silence was an admission of her party leader's guilt.

Meanwhile, amid the Ethics Committee's recommendations to suspend her from the Parliament, Moitra was appointed as the district chief of Krishnanagar (Nadia North) by the TMC, which falls under her Lok Sabha constituency.

Earlier Trinamool MP and Banerjee's nephew Abhishek came out in her support against the decision of the Lok Sabha ethics committee recommending her suspension from Parliament.

The ethics committee, after hearing Moitra in a closed-door meeting from which she and opposition MPs walked out over the manner of questioning, submitted a 500-page report to the Lok Sabha Speaker recommending that the TMC leader should not be allowed to continue as an MP and her membership should be terminated.

The committee called Moitra's actions "highly objectionable, unethical, heinous and criminal", and sought severe punishment.