Baharampur: Suspended TMC MLA Humayun Kabir on Saturday laid the foundation stone for a mosque – modelled on Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid – at Rejinagar in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, escalating political temperatures in the state where the assembly elections are due next year.

Amid a heavy deployment of state police, RAF and central forces, Kabir, alongside visiting Islamic clerics, cut a ceremonial ribbon on a sprawling stage at Rejinagar, even as the actual mosque construction site was nearly a kilometre away from the venue.

Slogans of “Nara-e-Takbeer, Allahu Akbar” rent the air as thousands, many of them carrying bricks on their heads as symbolic offerings, surged into the venue from the early morning.

The event was scheduled on December 6, the anniversary of the demolition of the

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