2023-08-27 05:08:24
26/08/2023
Indian authorities vowed Saturday to take action after a primary school teacher ordered her students to take turns slapping a fellow Muslim, a scene that was recorded and sparked outrage on social media.
The footage shows a private school teacher in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, ordering her students on Thursday to hit her 7-year-old classmate, allegedly because he got the multiplication tables wrong.
“Why do you hit him so little? Hit him hard”, he can be heard telling the children, while his partner is left crying. “She starts to hit him on the waist (…) His face is turning red, hit him more on the waist,” added the teacher.
Police Superintendent Satyanarayan Prajapat said the footage had been verified. “Departmental measures will be taken against the teacher,” he said in a video posted on social media.
The victim’s father filed a complaint with the Muzaffarnagar district police, where the incident took place, the magistrate reported in another video.
Human rights groups have warned for years that hate crimes and violence against India’s Muslim minority have increased since Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.
The images of the case of the minor subjected to beatings, which were disseminated on social networks, caused a wave of indignation in the country.
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi blamed the Bharatiya Janata (BJP) ruler for stoking religious intolerance in the Hindu-majority country. “Sowing the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, turning a sacred place like the school into a marketplace of hate,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).
“There is nothing worse that a teacher can do for the country,” he added. “This is the same kerosene spread by the BJP that has set fire to every corner of India,” the opposition leader continued.
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