Class 6 MP schoolgirl slapped 168 times by classmates on teacher’s order
The student of Navodaya school in Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua district was punished for not completing her homework.
A Class 6 student at Navoday school in Thandla, Jhabua district, was allegedly slapped 168 times by her classmates as punishment for not completing her homework at the behest of their teacher over a period of six days.
Although the girl initially did not tell anybody about her ordeal, her father lodged a complaint against the accused — Manoj Verma — when the matter finally came to light on Wednesday evening.
The police complaint recorded the student as stating that she could not complete her homework because she had taken leave from class due to an illness.
“This made the teacher angry, and he instructed my 14 classmates to slap me twice every day until the assignment was finished,” it said. The girl took six days — from January 11 to 16 — to complete her homework, but her classmates had already slapped her 168 times by then.
When confronted by the father, Verma allegedly told him that he did not beat the girl personally because the Right to Education Act forbids him from doing so. The law, however, does not specifically disallow using other children to mete out such punishment, he claimed.
Even the school principal, Shiv Sagar, allegedly admitted before the father that Verma asked the girl’s classmates to slap her. However, he chose to brush it off as “friendly punishment, where the classmates did not hit her hard, so she could perform better in the future”.
Thandla police inspector Shersingh Baghel said the student has been sent for a medical examination.
Collector Ashish Saxena said he had been appraised about the incident too. “I shall wait for the police to conclude their probe before taking appropriate action,” he added.
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