Even though item assignment throws error, the list inside tuple 'a' gets modified in place. Refer below, where the list value [8] gets added to the list value [5,6,7,7] at a[3]

>>> a
(2, 3, 4, [5, 6, 7, 7], 1)
>>> id(a[3])
140531212178376
>>> a[3]+=[8]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'tuple' object does not support item assignment
>>> a
(2, 3, 4, [5, 6, 7, 7, 8], 1)
>>> id(a[3])
140531212178376