Calcutta, Sept. 1: Constable Abdul Mannan Mullick could not at first forgive the woman who slapped him on BT Road, but realised later that the mother had acted in the heat of the moment.

“I just couldn’t forgive her at first. But last night, I thought maybe she had acted on the spur of the moment. After all, she is a mother. But I’m a father, too,” he said.

Susmita Chanda hit Mullick after she and her daughter were almost run over by a bus on the way to the girl’s school. The traffic policeman was not at his post.

“Trust me, I had to attend to a motorcyclist who hit a taxi waiting at the signal from behind and fell. The woman felt I left the spot to do something unnecessary and slapped me. I felt so humiliated that I wanted to throw myself under the wheels of a moving vehicle,” Mullick told The Telegraph.

He is a father of five sons. The elder two are teachers at a school in Murshidabad.

Susmita was initially sent to jail custody for four days for assaulting the policeman, but the order was altered after the judge had a change of heart. She has to appear in a police station every week for a month.

Mullick has also had a change of heart, but he cannot withdraw his case, a police officer said.

The mother’s fury at the policeman perhaps symbolised the city’s pent-up anger at a system soft on killer vehicles.

Vehicles continued to speed down that stretch of BT Road in Chiria More where Susmita had a close shave. And pedestrians continued to dodge vehicles to cross the road.

People who saw yesterday’s incident said the road was wide and good and the traffic, reckless. A 27-year-old tea stall owner said it was impossible for a lone traffic constable to control the chaos.

Mullick, on duty at the Bagbazar Street-Bidhan Sarani crossing today, said the BT Road stretch was dangerous.