Uttar Pradesh’s Neha Public School Class 2 student who was slapped by his classmates on the direction of principal Tripta Tyagi has said that he was hit for an hour because he did not study his multiplication tables.
The video of the incident that went viral on social media has drawn flak from Samajwadi Party, Congress leader and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi, Bollywood actor and activist Swara Bhasker among others.
The video shows a small boy standing in tears while the Neha Public Schools’ principal Tripta Tyagi urges students to beat up the child citing his Muslim identity.
A day after the video became viral the child has said, “I was beaten up because I had made a mistake. I didn’t learn multiplication tables, that’s why I was slapped by my classmates. She told the children to come and hit me hard. They kept hitting me for an hour”, according to a report by India Today.
The seven year old’s father also talked to news media agency ANI and said, “My son is seven years old. This incident happened on 24th August. The teacher made the students beat my child again & again. My nephew made the video and had gone to school for some work…My seven-year-old child was tortured for an hour or two. He is scared…This is not a Hindu-Muslim matter. We want the law should take its own course”.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had on Friday in a post on X condemned the incident saying, “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.”
Muzaffarnagar Police on Saturday booked the teacher accused of making instigating communal hatred by urging Hindu students to hit a Muslim child for not doing his homework.
The action came a day after a video showing a teacher asking her students to slap a Class 2 boy at a school in Khubbapur village elicited strong words from several political leaders.
In her defence, Neha Public School principal, Tripta Tyagi, has said that the video has been tampered with in order to stoke tensions.
She, however, said though it was wrong on her part to get a student slapped by classmates, 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.
Police booked Tyagi at the complaint of the boy’s family, but are yet to reveal the sections she has been charged with.