UP police on Monday, August 28, filed an FIR against Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of the fact-checking website Alt News, for allegedly revealing the identity of the student who was slapped by his classmates on teacher’s instructions at a school in Muzaffarnagar recently. The video of the incident was widely shared on social media.
The video shows the faces of the students and the teacher. Zubair claimed that the police had taken action only after the video had gone viral. He said had also spoken to the boy’s father and posted on his social media handle that the father did not want to escalate the matter by lodging a complaint with the police.
Zubair, in a post shared on August 25, stated that he deleted the video from social media “since the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) sought the same.”
NCPCR chairperson Priyank Kanoongo had earlier urged people not to reveal the identity of the boy. In the video that was doing rounds on social media, a teacher was purportedly heard telling the students to slap the ‘Mohamedden boy’.
The teacher, Tripta Tyagi, at Neha Public School in Muzaffarnagar UP, goes on to say in the class that all Muslim children should be beaten up like that and taught a lesson.
When a video first surfaced, many people called for the teacher’s arrest. Now, the posts have been withheld in India owing to a ‘legal demand’.
An FIR has now been filed against Tyagi based on the boy’s statement and his father’s complaint, under IPC sections 323 (causing hurt) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace).
