This Is How We Tackle Them: UP Teacher On Making Kids Slap A Muslim Student

Tripta Tyagi, the teacher who is in the centre of the controversy for making students slap their classmate, has justified her action saying that she is not "ashamed" of the incident.

"I am not ashamed. I have served the people of this village as a teacher. They all are with me," NDTV quoted Tyagi as saying.

She claimed that it was important to control the children in the school. "They have made laws, but we need to control the children in schools. This is how we tackle them," she stated.

However, she accepted the "mistake" but claimed that this issue had "unnecessarily turned into a big issue."

On Friday evening, a clip of a boy being thrashed by students surfaced online, triggering an angry reaction from netizens.

The incident reportedly occurred at Khubbapur village of Mansoorpur police station area, Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, at Neha Public School.

In the clip, the victim stands before the class, while the teacher remains seated and urges fellow students to step up and slap their classmate. In succession, the students approach and strike the victim while the teacher supervises the situation.

"I have declared that send all the Muslim children there," the teacher is heard saying in the clip. Asking others to slap the victim, she states, "Why don't you hit them him with force."

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.

In her defence, Tyagi had earlier said the video had been tampered with in order to stoke tensions. She claimed that the video was shot by an uncle of the boy. Tyagi 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.

However, the victim's father has denied any Hindu-Muslim angle to the incident.

"My son is seven years old. This incident happened on 24th August. The teacher made the students beat my child again and again. My nephew made the video and had gone to school for some work. My seven-year-old child was tortured for an hour or two. He is scared. This is not a Hindu-Muslim matter. We want the law to take its own course," the father of the child told Times Now. The video is reported from Khabbarpur village under the Mansurpur Police Station area.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the apex child rights body, has demanded action against the accused teacher.