As outrage poured in from all quarters, including political parties, police on Saturday booked the Muzaffarnagar schoolteacher 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 education department in connection with the matter. The teacher, Tripta Tyagi, was booked on the complaint of the boy’s family under IPC sections 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) — both non-cognisable offences. Such offences are bailable and do not lead to immediate arrest, and require a warrant. Leaders of different political and non-political organisations, including Bharatiya Kisan Union chief Naresh Tikait, Uttar Pradesh Imam Organisation chief Mufti Zulfikar Ali, the vice-president of UP Jamiat-e-ulema Hind Maulana Nazer Muhammad and a Congress fact-finding committee led by district unit president Subodh Sharma, visited the boy’s family at Khubbapur on Saturday.
Union Minister Sanjeev Kumar Balyan, who represents Muzaffarnagar in the Lok Sabha, visited village and spoke with the body’s family. He also met the accused schoolteacher.
During his visit to the boy’s village, senior Samajwadi Party leader and former Rajya Sabha MP Harendra Malik appealed to maintain brotherhood. He also made the boy sit with one of his classmates who had slapped him and offered toffees to both. Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA) of Muzaffarnagar Shubham Shukla said a showcause 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 school’s government recognition not be cancelled. A criminal case will 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 that it was the ruling party’s “politics of hate” that prepared the ground for such an incident to happen. The NCPCR on Saturday said it wrote to the district administration and the Uttar Pradesh Police to file an FIR in the matter.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, in a post on X on Friday, 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.
“This is the same kerosene spread by the BJP which has set every corner of India on fire. Children are the future of India we all have to teach them love not hatred,” he said. Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge slammed the BJP for its “divisive thinking” and said “such incidents tarnish our global image”.
TMC leader Derek O’Brien asked why the teacher was booked “under weak sections”. “They have charged the Neha Public School teacher with ‘mischief’. What’s going on?,” he asked in a video message posted on X. The Samajwadi Party alleged that it was the “politics of hate” of the BJP and the RSS that had brought the country to such a pass where a teacher can ask her students to slap a boy from a minority community over his religion. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav too demanded the teacher be sacked immediately and called her a “blot on teacher society”.
Harishchandra Srivastava, a BJP spokesperson, termed Yadav’s post on X a political agenda. “The tweet made by Akhilesh Yadav regarding the Muzaffarnagar school incident is superficial politics and a disgusting political agenda to create disharmony in the society. “We all in our student life have been punished by the teacher in school for not remembering tables, not correcting maths questions or not having good writing, and this is a natural process of improving discipline and talent in students,” he said. Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary spoke to the father of the victim and assured him of justice. The BJP’s Pilibhit MP Varun Gandhi, in a post on X, said the incident was shameful.
