Babul row: BJP leader threatens leftist “mercenaries”

Kolkata, Sep 20 (IANS) A senior BJP leader in West Bengal on Friday threatened to beat up the leftist "mercenaries" who assaulted union minister Babul Supriyo in Jadavpur University and said he would have been happier had the attackers been roughed up on Thursday itself.

"I don't know whether any of the attackers were beaten up. If those who attacked Babul Supriyo were beaten up, then I would have been happier.

"The uncivilised Leftist mercenaries of Jadavpur University who assaulted Babul Supriyo should have been flung on the ground and beaten up. The beatings will start today," state BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu told the media while taking part in a protest march organised by the BJP from its state party headquarters here.

Basu alleged that the Left activists had attacked Supriyo with the 'active cooperation' of the police and administration.

"Had the governor not rushed to the university, we wouldn't have been able to get back Babul alive," he said.

He said the incident was a further proof that there was no law and order in the state.

Supriyo was on Thursday heckled, slapped, punched and detained for over six hours by radical Left students in the campus, where he had gone to attend a freshers' welcome and address a seminar on the National Register of Citizens organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.

After over six hours, Supriyo was "rescued" by state governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who drove to the university escorted by a large police force, andA brought the union minister out of the campus in his car.

However, on his arrival, Dhankhar was also stranded for close to an hour in the campus as the radical Left protestors held a sit-in demonstration and even lay prostrate before his vehicle