West Bengal’s former deputy speaker and Trinamool Congress leader Asish Banerjee was found dead inside the party office near his home in Birbhum district on Sunday morning.

Nilanjan Das, a TMC spokesperson, posted on social media a note written in Bengali that was purportedly recovered near Asish Banerjee’s body. It said that false allegations of corruption had been made against him.

“Primarily it is a suicide case,” Birbhum Superintendent of Police Vidit Raj Bhundesh told The Indian Express. He added that the note also stated: “No one is responsible for my death.”

The body has been sent for post-mortem.

Asish Banerjee served as the deputy speaker of the West Bengal Assembly during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure as the chief minister. A five-term MLA from Rampurhat, he was defeated by Bharatiya Janata Party’s Dhruba Saha in the 2026 Assembly elections.

A relative of Asish Banerjee told The Indian Express that the note recovered near his body stated that he “never took a single penny in exchange for any work in my entire life”.

“Although I could not accept all of the party’s wrongdoings throughout my life, I could not protest either,” the relative quoted the letter as saying.

He also wrote that he was not involved in approving building plans or issuing no-objection certificates for the Tarapith Rampurhat Development Authority, The New Indian Express reported.

TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee said that the former MLA’s death “should trouble the conscience of everyone who believes that politics and journalism must have boundaries”.

In a social media post, he said that Asish Banerjee’s suicide note raises serious questions “about the sustained smear campaign he said he had endured”.

The BJP and sections of the media “must reflect on the consequences of a politics where allegations are amplified” and individuals are “condemned in the court of public opinion before the truth is established”, he added

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

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