Things will never be the same for the Gulati family after Ravi’s mental break down caused him to confess to attacking his own son, Nugget. During the Thursday episode of EastEnders, the weight of what he had done made Ravi snap.

The episode started with Ravi (Aaron Thiara) taking everyone in a pharmacy hostage, including Nugget (Juhaim Rasul Choudhury). He refused to let anyone leave until he got Nugget’s epilepsy medication, becoming enraged whenever anyone tried to escape or call the police.

He began rifling through the medicine cabinets despite the protests of his son and the pharmacist. Things took a turn for the worst when Ravi struggled to find the pills and ended up crying on the floor. As he broke down, he insisted that all he wanted was to make Nugget proud and be a different kind of father than the one he had. His speech inspired Nugget to keep looking for the pills, which he was delighted to find.

But rather than celebrate with his son, Ravi felt the need to come clean about the real person to blame for Nugget’s epilepsy. The teen had developed it after suffering a traumatic head injury following a brutal attack that put him in a coma. Though Ravi told Nugget he had been attacked by a thug, it was actually the elder Gulati who did it.

He had been spiked by a vengeful Harry (Elijah Holloway) and Nicola Mitchell (Laura Doddington), who wanted revenge for the part Ravi played in falsely imprisoning Harry. While in his drugged state, Ravi mistook Nugget for his father and beat him repeatedly.

In the pharmacy, Ravi told his son: “This is my fault. I did this.” He added that Nugget “wouldn’t forgive” him if he knew what he’d done. Though Nugget did not realise what Ravi was talking about, his mother Priya (Sophie Levy) did and warned Ravi that confessing would help no one.

Despite the severity of Ravi’s mental health crises, many fans said they had no sympathy for the character, due to the role he played in Harry’s struggles with addiction. Ravi had forced Harry to be a part of his drugs gang, and when Harry wanted to leave, Ravi did little to stop his right hand man Okie (Aayan Ibikunle Shoderu) from chaining Harry to a bed and forcibly keeping hopped up on heroin.

One fan said: “What’s annoying me about this Ravi storyline is that it is such an important topic especially for a ‘hard’ man but I just find myself not caring and as other people said having no sympathy.”

Another one added: “They’re trying so hard to make me feel sorry for Ravi and I just can’t. I think it’s because he behaved like such a monster during the Harry/Kojo storyline – and I don’t just mean what he did, but also his attitude throughout the whole thing.

“He was clearly having the time of his life and was so bloody smug about it. That’s why I don’t buy that he “HAD TO PROTECT THE FAMILY”. There was no reluctance in anything that he did.”

A third said: “Aaron is playing this well, but I really feel nothing for Ravi giving how awful of a person he is. And Priya still blindly defending him is crazy too.”