Muzaffarnagar (UP), Aug 26: As outrage poured in from all quarters including political parties, Muzaffarnagar Police on Saturday booked the teacher accused of making communal comments and ordering her students to slap a Muslim classmate for not doing his homework.
The school was also served a notice by the state education department in connection with the matter.
The teacher, Trapti Tyagi, was booked a day after a video showed her asking her students to slap the Class 2 boy at Neha Public School in Khubbapur village and also making a communal remark.
The video elicited strong words from several political leaders with NCPCR, the apex child right body, demanding action against the accused teacher.
Police booked Tyagi at the complaint of the boy’s family, under IPC sections 323 and 504 – both non-cognizable offences. Such offences are bailable and do not lead to immediate arrest, and require a warrant.
In her defence, Tyagi, has 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. She said though it was wrong on her part 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 school management through the secretary of the management committee Ravinder tyagi. It has been asked to furnish its response by August 28 as to why the government recognition of the school not be cancelled.
A criminal case would be registered against the authorities of the school, where the incident took place, the BSA said, adding that a team has been sent there.
The matter snowballed into a fray between the BJP and the opposition parties, many of which alleged it was the ruling party’s “politics of hate” that prepared the ground for such an incident to happen.
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights on Saturday said it wrote a letter to the district administration and UP Police to file an FIR in the matter.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had on Friday in a post on X condemned the incident saying a teacher could do no worse for the country as he accused the BJP of filling people’s minds with poison. “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. (PTI)
