Parents of youth who slapped Didi's kin claim he is ill

Parents of Debasish Acharya, the youth who was arrested for slapping Trinamool Congress MP and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee, claimed on Tuesday that their son is “mentally unstable”.

The youth’s mother also expressed her wish to meet the chief minister to sort out things. Acharya was arrested on Sunday on a number of charges, including attempt to murder.

“My son is suffering from depression and is undergoing treatment,” Acharya’s mother Snehlata told a Bengali news channel from her house in Tamluk at East Midnapore district.

His father Deshbandhu said that Debasish has been mentally unstable for the last few months and repeatedly threatened to commit suicide even for the slightest reasons. The 25-year-old Acharya walked up the stage during a public meeting of the Trinamool MP on Sunday on the pretext of clicking photos with his cell phone and slapped him twice.

The police submitted a report to the state government on Monday claiming that Acharya’s attack was intentional and driven by ideology since he is a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadre and an active member of the BJP-affiliated students’ body, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.

Acharya’s father refuted his son was a RSS affiliate. “Around four months back he started to behave differently, making us think that he’s losing his mental balance. Whenever we scolded him, he threatened to kill himself,” he told reporters.

Acharya, who was severely beaten up by Trinamool supporters after his attack on Abhishek, is currently recuperating at a state-run hospital in Tamluk.

Though doctors believe he is out of danger and his condition is stable, they want to keep him under observation for a few more days since he received several injuries to his head. The police, claiming further proof of Acharya’s political allegiance, pointed out that he lived at East Midnapore’s Contai in a rented accommodation, which belonged to local RSS functionary, Tamal Biswas.

“Acharya moved into this house on December 1 and shared the room with college friend, Sukhen Das. Both Biswas and Das were detained on Monday for questioning. They, however, denied having any knowledge about Debasish’s plan to attack the MP,” a senior police official said.

Biswas told reporters: “I’m with the RSS but I had no role in the attack or had any idea about what Debasish planned to do. I only rented out the place to him.”