The Supreme Court on January 12, 2024, directly blamed the Uttar Pradesh government for the incident of a teacher at a Muzaffarnagar private school goading her students to slap their seven-year-old Muslim classmate.
“All this happened because the State did not do what it was expected to do. The State should be very concerned about the manner in which this incident happened,” Justice AS Oka, heading a Bench, told the counsel for Uttar Pradesh.
“But it was a private school…” the State counsel protested.
The court had in November asked experts from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to intervene and help with the counselling of the child and his classmates.
Also read: Student slap incident throws light on poor quality of schooling in rural Uttar Pradesh
On Friday, the Bench asked advocate Shadan Farasat, appearing for activist Tushar Gandhi, who had brought the case to the Supreme Court in a petition, to go through the TISS recommendations and make further suggestions, if necessary, in consultation with the parents of the child. Mr. Farasat said the TISS report was “inadequate”.
In an earlier hearing, the court had flagged the incident as “very serious” and in direct violation of Article 21A (the fundamental right of a child to free and compulsory education) of the Constitution, the Right to Education Act and even the Uttar Pradesh Rules which tasks the local authorities to ensure that children do not face discrimination in classrooms.
In September, the court had criticised the State for a “watered-down” and delayed FIR against the school teacher, who was shown on video showering communal remarks on the child. The court had at the time raised questions about religious discrimination and quality of education in Uttar Pradesh. “The manner in which the incident has happened should shock the conscience of the State,” Justice Oka had observed.
Justice Oka had pointed out that the FIR registered after a “long delay” by the Uttar Pradesh Police has ignored statements made by the child’s father about objectionable remarks made by the teacher, Tripti Tyagi.
Uttar Pradesh Additional Advocate General Garima Parshad said the school the child was currently attending was 28 km away. The Right to Education Act required a child to be enrolled in a school within one-and-a-half km radius of home, she pointed out.
“It is the school which was within this radius that caused harm to the child,” Mr. Farasat countered.
He said the curriculum followed by the current school was good and the child’s father was himself taking him to and fro from school everyday now.
Mr. Gandhi has urged the apex court to formulate guidelines for the preventive and remedial measures within school systems in relation to violence committed against children, including students belonging to religious minorities.
“Corporal punishment has become rampant in the Indian education system. The appalling and ghastly episode is preceded by a series of instances of violence against students belonging to marginalised communities,” the petition has said.
The plea said violence in schools had an insidious effect even on students who witnessed it, creating an atmosphere of fear, anxiety, intolerance and polarisation.
