Rishra: Footage from a CCTV camera emerged on Thursday showing a girl being slapped, struck with a bag, pushed to a corner and then evicted from the room by a youth that the victim identified as the general secretary of the Trinamul-affiliated student union at Bidhan Chandra College in Rishra, about 25km from central Calcutta.

The girl, a member of the student union, had met the assistant commissioner of police in Chandernagore on Wednesday to report the alleged incident, which she said occurred on the college campus on December 4. She named the assaulter as Shahid Hasan Khan, who heads the student union of the college and is the son of the vice-chairman of Rishra Municipality.

The girl, a third-year undergraduate student, said she had delayed filing a complaint about the assault fearing reprisal. When she mustered the courage to do so, the teacher-in-charge of the union allegedly refused to accept her complaint, she said.

Ramesh Kar, the teacher-in-charge and acting principal of the college, denied that the girl had reported any such incident to him.

"I was not present on the campus on December 4 when the incident took place," he said.

Based on the CCTV footage that led the college authorities to acknowledge the incident, Shahid was suspended and given three days to explain why he should not be expelled from the institute. "We will not tolerate such acts of violence against women," the teacher-in-charge said when Metro contacted him on Thursday evening.

He said an inquiry committee was probing the incident.

In the footage, a girl in a red jacket resembling the complainant is seen being slapped and struck with a bag. The assailant tries to push her out of the room, after which he kicks the bag lying on the floor and then a chair. The footage skips to a moment when she is pushed to a corner that is out of the camera's range.

"You could see in the footage how I was beaten up by Shahid Hasan Khan," the girl said. "He slapped me repeatedly and then forced me into a corner.... His intention was not just to assault me physically. He also tried to molest me. When I resisted with all my strength, he started hitting me again. He eventually pushed me out of the room."

The girl alleged that she had been subjected to continuous "harassment", physical and mental, inside and outside the campus, by the general secretary. This was after she raised her voice against "fake bills" allegedly submitted by him in the name of the union.

"He would get those fake bills signed by the teacher-in-charge," she alleged.

Shahid could not be contacted. His father, municipality vice-chairman, Zahid Khan, told Metro: "I came to know about the complaint from the media only today morning."

The girl's police complaint mentions that Shahid had threatened her with further assault.

"Initially I did not lodge any complaint with the police as I was very scared... He (the accused student) had been constantly threatening me and my parents with dire consequences if I opened my mouth or lodged a complaint with the administration," the girl said.

Education minister Partha Chatterjee said he had sought a report on the incident from Tapan Dasgupta, who is the president of Trinamul's Hooghly unit.