The Uttar Pradesh education department has ordered to shut a school in Muzaffarnagar where a teacher allegedly made students slap a Muslim classmate for not doing his homework, triggering widespread outrage. Authorities said the students studying in this school will be admitted to nearby schools so that their studies will not be affected.
The Neha Public School in Khubbapur village was reportedly running without recognition.
A video that went viral on social media showed Tripta Tyagi, the accused teacher, asking students in her class to slap the 7-year-old Muslim boy, and the students, as per her her instructions, taking turns to slap him.
Tyagi has been booked on the complaint of the boy's family under IPC sections 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace)—both non-cognisable offences. Such offences are bailable and do not lead to immediate arrest, and require a warrant.
As the incident snowballed into a political controversy, Tyagi came up with a clarification, saying she was forced to do it as she is handicapped and was not able to stand up and reach the student who had not done his assignment. She said the video has been tampered with in order to stoke tensions.
The opposition alleged that it was the ruling BJP’s "politics of hate" that prepared the ground for such an incident to happen.
"Sowing the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, turning a holy place like school into a marketplace of hatred -- nothing worse a teacher can do for the country. This is the same kerosene spread by the BJP which has set every corner of India on fire. Children are the future of India we all have to teach them love not hatred," said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav demanded the teacher be sacked immediately and called her a "blot on teacher society".
Various Muslim organisations like Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind have also called for stringent legal action against the teacher.