Students of Panjab university beaten up controversial social media celebrity Tarek Fatah, after he reportedly called a Sikh Student ‘Khalistani’ and a muslim student from Jammu and Kashmir a ‘terrorist’.

Tarek went to the university on an invitation to deliver a TedX talk on Balochistan.

Gagandeep Singh Dhillon, a PhD scholar in geography, told Indian Express, “I was sitting at the physics canteen when Tarek came and began an informal interaction with students. We were discussing yesterday’s Nagrota terror attack. When he was talking to us, the department librarian came. When the students rose to show respect, Tarek told them, ‘Indians need to stop giving such treatment to their seniors’.”

Tarek reportedly added that he would not stand up for his own father, ‘why are you all standing up for this person’.

When Mustafa, a PhD scholar from Kargil, objected, he told him, “Hey you gori chamdi, where are you from?… You’re a Pakistani terrorist, you’re an anti-national.”

Tarek then allegedly told Dhillon, “You are a Khalistani.”

This provoked angry students to beat him up. The situation became so worse that the organisers had to cancel his talk.

A visibly shaken Fatah later told a TV channel, “As we stood up, there’s a guy, I don’t know his name, I don’t have his picture, he pushed me toward the ground. But luckily, a lot of students surround. So nothing happened. But he was taken away by his friends.”

An official complaint has been lodged against the matter.