New Delhi: Police in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district Thursday arrested a school teacher, identified as Shaista (identified by a single name only) in the FIR, for “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language” among other accusations, after she allegedly instructed a Muslim student to slap his Hindu classmate, after the latter failed to recall a lesson taught by her previously.
Both students are minors and study in the same class at St. Anthony’s Senior Secondary School in Dugawer, Asmoli, which is part of Sambhal district.
The case is similar to one reported from UP’s Muzaffarnagar last month, where Trupta Tyagi, a teacher at a private school, had allegedly made Hindu students slap a Muslim classmate for not doing his homework.
According to Nitin Tyagi, father of the Sambhal boy who was allegedly slapped, the incident took place on Tuesday. Talking to ThePrint over phone, Tyagi claimed, “My son, a class 5 student, was asked to recall a lesson which he failed to do. Another student who belongs to a different community [Muslim] was asked to recall the same lesson and he did it successfully. After this, the class teacher [Shaista] asked the other student to slap my son, to ensure that he remembers his lesson in the future”.
According to Tyagi, when he returned home that evening, he was told by his wife that his son was not feeling well. On further questioning, the boy shared the details of the alleged incident with him.
Tyagi, a father of four, said it was after witnessing his son’s “demoralisation” that he decided to file a written complaint against the teacher, two days after the incident. The complaint was registered Thursday at Asmoli police station and the teacher was arrested the same day. Though the FIR also mentions the minor student who allegedly slapped Tyagi’s son, no action has been taken against him yet, police sources told ThePrint.
The teacher has been booked under sections 153-A (promoting enmity…) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)