Union minister Babul Supriyo on Saturday told the mother of a student who allegedly attacked him at Jadavpur University on September 19 that he would not take any legal action against her son. The woman, according to a clipping of a Bengali newspaper tweeted by the Bharatiya Janata Party leader, suffers from cancer.
“Please don’t worry, aunty,” Supriyo tweeted. “I will not harm your son in any way. I just want him to learn from his mistakes. I have not lodged any police complaint against anybody, nor did I allow anyone to do so. Stop worrying and get well soon.”
On Friday, Supriyo had shared pictures of the students who allegedly attacked him and said it remained to be seen what action West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would take against them.
One of those students identified in the photo was Debanjan Ballav, whose mother Rupali Ballav made a tearful appeal to Supriyo to forgive her son, Hindustan Times reported. Debanjan Ballav is a second-year student of Sanskrit College in North Kolkata. His father teaches in a school in the state’s East Burdwan district.
After the minister’s post on Friday, the Burdwan town school administration received phone calls from intelligence agencies, the police and the state education department. All of them sought information about the college student, the newspaper reported.
The minister has claimed he was heckled when he visited the university campus on Thursday to address a seminar organised by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. However, according to students, the rightwing outfit’s activists and the minister shoved students and were violent. Hours after being holed up in the campus, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar visited the campus to escort out Supriyo.
On Friday, state BJP President Dilip Ghosh said a surgical strike should be conducted to destroy the university as it had become “a hub of anti-nationals and Communists”. The saffron party organised a rally in the city to protest against the alleged assault on the minister. “Leftist mercenaries of Jadavpur University should be beaten up black and blue,” said senior state BJP leader Sayantan Basu. “This attack that took place yesterday was a joint effort by CPI(M) [Communist Party of India (Marxist)] and TMC [Trinamool Congress].”
The students of the university, who have accused the ABVP of vandalising college property and attacking students, also marched in huge numbers in protest against the BJP on Friday.
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