Shristy Kamal, Pune
An FIR (First Information Report) was filed under non-cognizable charges after a private school teacher encouraged students to slap their seven-year-old Muslim classmate in the sensitively religious Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh.
This comes after the disgusting act was caught on camera and went viral on social media. The video showed the teacher, identified as Tripta Tyagi, asking the students to slap their Muslim classmates. The teacher watched as the students took turns slapping him. Additionally, the teacher is overheard making racial statements and encouraging the classmates to attack the Muslim student more forcefully. The incident occurred on Friday at a private school in the district’s Khubbapur village but only became public on Saturday. The incident sparked a widespread outcry, and the opposition leaders attacked the BJP government.
Later, the teacher said that the Muslim student’s parents had requested that she be strict with their son if he didn’t finish his homework and pay attention to his academics. “’The boy had not learned the tables. As I am handicapped, I got other students to slap him,” she said. “In the video, some objectionable comments were made. We spoke to the principal of the school, and this fact came to light that the female teacher said that those Mohammedan students whose mothers did not look after their studies do not perform well. The person who recorded the video confirmed it,” Muzaffarnagar Police said in a video.
According to sources, the parents of the Muslim child who had been smacked by his classmates were talked out of calling the police and withdrawing their child from school. However, they complained once the incident’s footage went popular on social media. To safeguard the students’ identities in the event, NCPCR’s chief of child rights, Priyank Kanoongo, issued a social media plea asking people to refrain from sharing the footage. Addressing the issue, he wrote, “In Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar, the incident of a teacher getting a child beaten up by other children in the class has been reported. Taking cognizance, instructions are being issued for action. Everyone is requested not to share the child’s video, give information about such incidents by email, and not become a part of the crime by revealing the children’s identity.”