School teacher orders Muslim student to slap Hindu classmate in UP's Sambhal, arrested

NEW DELHI: A school teacher was arrested on Thursday for inciting communal hatred after she allegedly ordered a Muslim student to slap a Hindu classmate for not answering a question, police said. The incident took place at a private school on Tuesday in Dugawar village under the Asmoli police station limits in Sambhal district, they said.

On the basis of a complaint filed by the Hindu boy's father, the teacher, Shaista, was booked under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), Additional SP Shrish Chandra said.

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The accused teacher has been arrested, the official added. The boy's father alleged that his son is a student of class 5 in the school where his class teacher got him slapped by a Muslim student after he could not answer a question asked by her. In his complaint, the father said that this hurt his son's religious feelings. A probe is on in the matter, Additional SP Chandra said.

In a similar incident at Khubbapur village in Muzaffarnagar last month, a teacher of a private school had got a Muslim child slapped in a class by his classmates for not doing homework. A case was registered against the accused teacher, Tripta Tyagi, under IPC sections 323 (voluntary causing hurt) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace).

The Supreme Court on September 25 said that there cannot be any quality education if a student is sought to be penalised on the ground that he belongs to a particular community as it pulled up the Uttar Pradesh government for shoddy probe in the Muzaffarnagar case. The top court directed the UP government to appoint a senior IPS officer within a week to probe the case.