Muzaffarnagar school teacher booked as clip of students beating Muslim child sparks fury

livemint.com:

An Uttar Pradesh school teacher was booked on Saturday after ordering her students to slap their Muslim classmate. A video of the incident went viral on Friday with Opposition leaders lashing out at the ruling BJP for ‘hate politics’. The school was also served a notice by the state education department in connection with the matter.

The video in question shows Tripta Tyagi making a communal remark and asking her students to slap the Class 2 boy. The incident took place at Neha Public School in Muzaffarnagar's Khubbapur village and has since grabbed eyeballs across India and beyond. The police have booked Tripta Tyagi on the basis of a complaint filed by the student's family under IPC sections 323 and 504.

The non-cognisable offences will not lead to immediate arrest and require a warrant. “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," the child was quoted as saying in an India Today report. Tyagi meanwhile said that the video has been tampered with in order to stoke tensions.

She claimed the video was shot by an uncle of the boy. Tyagi contends that while she may have been wrong to get a student slapped by his 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. Basic Shiksha Adhikari of Muzaffarnagar Shubham Shukla said that a show cause notice has been served to the management.