UP school case: Father says 'child tortured'; teacher's 'pressure' claim

The video shows the teacher of a private school in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar asking Class 2 students to slap their classmate from a minority community.

The father of a seven-year-old child who was repeatedly slapped by classmates on the instruction of their school teacher called for legal action but denied any communal angle to the incident.

Father of the child who was beaten by classmates (L) and the teacher who instructed them.

“My son is seven years old. This incident happened on August 24. The teacher made the students beat my child again and again. My nephew who had gone to school for some work made the video,” he told news agency ANI.

“This is not a Hindu-Muslim matter. We want the law should take its own course.”

A video of some students slapping their classmate from a minority community on the instruction of their teacher, identified as Tripta Tyagi, who is also the school principal, surfaced on social media on Friday, sparking widespread outrage. In the 39-second clip, Tyagi could be seen sitting on her chair and encouraging students in her class to slap another boy for not learning multiplication tables.

Tyagi, however, claimed that the video was edited to misrepresent the incident as communal and said she had no such intentions. The teacher admitted to having made other students beat the seven-year-old but insisted that it was only because of the pressure from the kid's parents to be strict with him and her physical disability to punish on her own.

“The video that was made viral was edited and cut, I had no such intentions…in our place, Hindus and Muslims stay with unity and we have more Muslim students in our school…There was pressure from the parents of the child to be strict with him. I am handicapped I can’t get up…he was not doing homework for the last 2 months…so I made 2-3 students beat him up so that he would start doing his work,” she told ANI.

The father said that he had indeed asked the teacher to be strict with his child but objected to making other students beat him.

“My seven-year-old child was tortured for an hour or two. He is scared,” the father said.

On the purported objectionable remarks she was heard making in the viral video, Tyagi said, “What I said was 'Mohammedan mothers' must not take their kids to their material uncles’ homes as the exam is approaching. But they cut this video and took the 'Mohammedan' word…I had no such intentions.”

When asked about whether it was a mistake making other students hit the child, she said, “Yes, I have made a mistake and I seek apology with folded hands.”