india

Updated: Sep 21, 2019 13:47 IST

Just a day after Union minister Babul Supriyo tweeted the photograph that showed a young man pulling his hair at Jadavpur University on Thursday evening, he assured the mother of his attacker that he won’t take any step against her son.

“Please don’t worry, aunty. I would not harm your son in any way. I just want that he takes lessons from his misdeed. I have not lodged any police complaint against anybody, nor did I allow anyone to do so. Shed your worries and get well soon. Take my pronaam,” Supriyo said in a tweet.

The woman Supriyo referred to as aunty was Rupali Ballav, the mother of Debanjan Ballav Chatterjee, whose picture was posted by the minister on Friday morning. “This is the guy who led the assault in #JadavpurUniversity .. we will find him out and then see what @MamataOfficial does to him in terms of charging him for assault without ANY PROVOCATION whatsoever from our/my side,” Supriyo had tweeted with the picture.

This is the guy who led the assault in #JadavpurUniversity .. we will find him out and then see what @MamataOfficial does to him in terms of charging him for assault without ANY PROVOCATION whatsoever from our/my side@CPKolkata @BJP4Bengal @ABVPVoice @BJYM pic.twitter.com/RzImVk7r5C — Babul Supriyo (@SuPriyoBabul) September 20, 2019

After the minister’s social media post went viral, Debanjan’s mother, who has been suffering from cancer for the past three years, made a tearful appeal to the media that her son be pardoned.

Debanjan stays in Kolkata and is a second-year student of Sanskrit College in north Kolkata.

Debanjan’s father is a teacher of a school in Bengal’s East Burdwan district, about 100 km from Kolkata. But he did not attend school on Friday.

After the minister’s post, the authorities of Burdwan Town School got phone calls from intelligence agencies, police and the state education department seeking information on Debanjan. But the college student could not be contacted.