A school teacher in Uttar Pradesh's Sambhal district was arrested on Thursday, 28 September, for "inciting communal hatred" after she allegedly told a Muslim student to slap his Hindu classmate for "not answering a question in class."
This comes three days after the Supreme Court pulled up the state government over lapses in its probe of the Muzaffarnagar incident.
The location: The alleged incident took place at a private school on Tuesday, 26 September, in Dugawar village under the Asmoli police station limits in Sambhal district, police said.
What happened: According to the First Information Report (FIR) accessed by The Quint, the 10-year-old student's father alleged that his son, a Class 5 student, was slapped by a Muslim student at the behest of the teacher, identified as Shaista.
"When Shaista, the school teacher asked my son a question in class, he was not able to answer. Because of this, she ordered a class student to slap my son on his face in front of the whole class," the father said in his complaint.
Then.. The 10-year-old student went back home and narrated the incident to his parents, the FIR stated. "My son felt humiliated and was upset when he reached home. This has hurt our religious feelings" the father said.
The case: A First Information Report (FIR) has been registered under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 153-A (promoting enmity between different sections on the basis of religion) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The teacher has also been suspended from the school, Sambhal police added.
What preceded this: The incident comes nearly a month after a similar case at Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar, where a teacher of a private school had got a Muslim child slapped in a class by his classmates for not doing his homework. The 30-second-long purported video had sparked outrage on social media.
The bigger picture: On 25 September, the apex court said that there cannot be any quality education if a student sought to be penalised on the ground that he/she belongs to a particular community as it pulled up the Uttar Pradesh government for a shoddy probe into the Muzaffarnagar case.
"This is a very serious issue. Teacher telling students to hit a classmate because they belong to a particular community! Is this quality education? State must take responsibility of the education of the child. If the allegations are true, this should shock the conscience of the state," Justice Abhay S Oka was quoted as saying by LiveLaw.
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