West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Monday questioned the silence of state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the arrest of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan in connection with alleged seizure of banned drugs onboard a cruise ship, and wondered whether the Trinamool Congress supremo is keeping mum on the issue to please her “friends in the BJP”.

Chowdhury alleged that a conspiracy had been hatched to “defame” Shah Rukh Khan and his family as he did not bow before the BJP.

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“Our Chief Minister speaks on every topic, but she has maintained a stoic silence on the issue of the arrest of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.

“Shah Rukh Khan is the brand ambassador of West Bengal. Mamata Banerjee calls him her brother. Then why is she silent on the issue? It seems she is desperate to please her friends in the BJP,” he said.

Aryan Khan was arrested on October 3 after the NCB raided a Goa-bound cruise ship off the Mumbai coast and claimed to have recovered drugs from some persons. He is currently in judicial custody and lodged at the Arthur Road prison in Mumbai.

“A conspiracy has been hatched to defame Shah Rukh Khan and his family as he did not bow before the BJP leadership. We had seen a similar incident last year when Rhea Chakraborty was hounded in the Sushant Singh Rajput case,” he said.

On Monday, Chowdhury, who is also the Leader of the Congress party in Lok Sabha, conducted a sit-in demonstration at Baharampur in Murshidabad district in protest against the Lakhimpur Kheri incident.

The Congress leader slammed poll strategist Prashant Kishor and Banerjee for questioning the grand old party’s fight against the BJP.

“We are fighting against the BJP across the country. It is only Prashant Kishor and Mamata Banerjee who are questioning us. A few months back, we saw Prashant Kishor meeting our leaders and speaking a lot on ways to revive the party. Now he is saying something different. This only shows his true colours,” he said.

The relationship between the Congress and the TMC touched a new low with Mamata Banerjee’s party taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi’s defeat in Amethi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, wondering whether the Congress can erase the loss through a Twitter trend.

The ties between the Congress and the TMC got strained recently after the latter’s mouthpiece, ‘Jago Bangla’ asserted party supremo Mamata Banerjee and not Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has emerged as the face of the opposition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.