Will teacher be prosecuted or culture of ‘hate’ allowed to flourish: Kapil Sibal on UP school viral video

PTI, Aug 26, 2023, 12:12 PM IST

After a video of a teacher in Uttar Pradesh allegedly asked her students to slap a boy from a minority community went viral, Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal on Saturday asked if Prime Minister Narendra Modi will condemn this publicly and the teacher be prosecuted or the culture of ”hate” be allowed to flourish.

The video purportedly showing a school teacher asking her students to slap a boy from what she is heard referring to as ”Mohammaden” community and also passing objectionable remarks against the community has gone viral on social media, with Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra condemning the incident. The teacher can be seen asking the students of class 2 of a private school in Khubbapur village under Mansurpur police station area here to hit the hapless child.

In a post on X, Sibal slammed it as ”culture of hate” and said that a teacher of a private school in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar asked Hindu students to beat up a Muslim student in the classroom.

”If true, will Yogi ji (Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath) speak up? Will Modi ji condemn this publicly? Will the teacher be prosecuted? Or will the culture of ‘hate’ be allowed to flourish?” he said.

Sibal, who was a Union minister during UPA I and II, quit the Congress in May last year and was elected to the Rajya Sabha as an Independent member with the Samajwadi Party’s support. He has floated a non-electoral platform ‘Insaaf’ aimed at fighting injustice. BSP MP Danish Ali also condemned the incident.

Sharing the video, he said on X, ”Last week, a teacher lost his job in India for asking his students to vote for educated leaders. Now, a teacher in Uttar Pradesh is let off with an apology after she got her class to hit a student because he was a Muslim. This is hate crime. Where is WCD (women and child development) minister, where is Yogi’s bulldozer?”

Taking cognizance of the incident, Circle Officer Ravishankar on Friday told reporters, ”The viral video was examined, and prima facie, it seems the child was beaten up for not completing his school work. Some objectionable comments can also be heard in the video. We are looking into the matter and further action will be taken.” Basic Shiksha Adhikari Shubham Shukla had said apart from the students, two people are also seen in the video, one of whom is the teacher, while efforts are on to identify the other person.

”Action will be initiated against both the persons and also against the school management,” he had said. Asked to comment on the religious identity of the victim child and those who hit him, Shukla said, ”As of now, we cannot say it as this is a matter of investigation. Our team will probe this, and the police have also taken cognisance of this case.”