An incident in an Uttar Pradesh school, where students were made to slap a fellow Muslim student, has invoked sharp reactions from netizens and politicans, including Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and BJP MP Varun Gandhi.
Tripta Tyagi, a teacher at Neha Public School in Khubbapur village of Manzoorpur area in Muzaffarnagar, urged the children to hit the student harder. A man (probably another teacher) can be heard laughing in the background, and saying, “Sahi keh rahin aap, padhai kharab hai…” (you are right, education is bad).
The students are seen slapping the child one after the another, while he keeps crying. The ‘errant’ student was punished for not learning tables.
The teacher is also heard saying she wants the seven-year-old evicted from the school.
The student’s father, however, said that a compromise has been reached and that he did not want to file a complaint against the teacher. But, he might withdraw the child from the school, he said.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), BJP MP Varun Gandhi described the incident as one which had ‘lowered the dignity of the entire country’. Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, too, condemned the incident.
Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal, in a post on X, slammed it as "culture of hate". "If true, will Yogi ji (Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath) speak up? Will Modi ji condemn this publicly? Will the teacher be prosecuted? Or will the culture of 'hate' be allowed to flourish?" he said.
Muzaffarnagar Superintendent of Police Satyanarayan Prajapat said, “We found that the teacher had said that those Muslim mothers who did not pay attention to their children’s studies, destroyed their education. The BSA (Basic Shiksha Adhikari) has also been informed and departmental action shall be taken against her.”
The BSA, Shubham Shukla, said, “Action shall be taken against the two teachers and against the school management. We cannot say for sure that the students who slapped the child were all from one religion. This school is registered on UDISE. It was recognised in 2019 but we will investigate if the registration was renewed”.
UDISE stands for Unified District Information System for Education, which tracks more than 14.89 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers and 26.5 crore children.
Apparently, Tyagi has behaved similarly earlier, too.
The All-India Trinamool Congress, posted from its official X account, “This grotesque display of prejudice sheds light on the despicable depths to which bigotry and hatred has seeped into our educational institutions. The venomous touch of @BJP4INDIA’s divisive politics is setting India ablaze”.
Anil Dubey, the national spokesperson of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, which has a strong presence in western UP (in which Muzaffarnagar falls) said, “Our society considers teachers as Gods…why has this teacher with a poisonous mindset not been arrested as yet?”
Muzaffarnagar Child Welfare Committee chairperson Rajeev Kumar issued a warning against sharing of the video.
“Revealing the identity of a minor is a violation of legal provisions. It can invite six months of imprisonment and/or a fine of two lakhs. While we are investigating the matter, this is a warning to those who are circulating the video to not do so. We will take action against them”.
