Gurmehar Kaur row: Virender Sehwag breaks silence over viral tweet, says it wasn't meant for Kargil martyr's daughter

New Delhi: Former Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag usually leaves his fans in splits through his witty tweets on social media. However, things turned serious after his 'placard tweet' was interpreted as a way to poke fun at Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur.

While some saw the funny side to it, plenty of people also accused the 'Nawab of Najafgarh' of bullying the 20-year-old, who has grabbed eyeballs ever since she started her online campaign against the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) student body after last week's violence at Ramjas College in Delhi.

Sehwag finally broke his silence over the controversy and said that his tweet only meant fun and was not aimed at Gurmehar at all.

"My tweet wasn't intended for Gurmehar. It was plain fun but people construed the other way," he told India Today.

Gurmehar, who is the daughter of martyr Captain Mandeep Singh, took the Internet by storm when she posted a video in May last year where held a placard that read, “Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him.”

Sehwag, who now has close to nine million followers on Twitter, recently posted a photograph holding a placard that read, "I didn't score two triple centuries, my bat did".

Unlike his funny tweets, this one created a ruckus across the country with several communities hitting out at the Delhi-born cricketer.

Kaur, who got death and rape threats after her campaign against the ABVP, has been provided adequate security by police.

A day after the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) wrote to Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik over the threats to Kaur, the police slapped a First Information Report.

On Monday, DCW forwarded a complaint of the Lady Shri Ram College student regarding the online abuse. The Deputy Commissioner of Police of the area then spoke to her and provided necessary security, the police said.