Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh: A day after the video of a school teacher making her students hit a Muslim classmate sparked widespread public outrage, and Twitter, responding to a “legal removal demand” from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, removed messages about the crime, the dominant Tyagi community in Muzaffarnagar district in western Uttar Pradesh attempted to dilute the heinous nature of an attack on the seven-year-old in Khubbapur village. 

While a second Muslim boy alleged that the Hindu teacher had meted out the same punishment to him four days before his cousin, Muslims, mostly labourers working in the sugarcane belt populated by wealthy Hindu farmers, insisted the Tyagi teacher’s actions were cruel and condemnable but not communal. 

Despite the unequal power dynamics between the communities of the victim and perpetrator,  the boy’s father, Mohammad Irshad, a 42-year-old farm labourer, was adamant about legal action. 

The narrow road to the village, flanked by sugarcane fields, was riddled with sports utility vehicles (SUVs) of politicians making a beeline to meet  Irshad, who filed a police complaint after that video of the incident triggered widespread outrage.

Rahul Tyagi, a 38-year-old farmer, said the media had misrepresented the matter. 

“This was such a small matter. We all were beaten in schools. It is common for teachers to punish kids in schools when they make mistakes. Nothing wrong and big in that,” he said.

Unrepentant Teacher 

In the video, the teacher, a 60-year-old woman, Tripta Tyagi, was heard saying, “I have declared that all those Mohammadan [i.e. Muslim] children should be…(inaudible)," and asked his fellow students to slap the Muslim student one by one. 

The 40-second recording was made by the Muslim student’s cousin, Mohammad Nadeem, a 25-year-old who owns a backhoe excavator and went to meet Tyagi about a construction job when he witnessed the incident and recorded the seven-year-old standing and crying as three classmates came forward slapped him across the face and hit him on the waist. 

At one point, Tyagi told a student to hit the Muslim student with more force: “How are you hitting him? Hit him with force. Now come, who is next?” 

Tyagi teaches English and owns the Neha Public School, a private school for classes one to five, where the Muslim boy was humiliated and assaulted in the morning on 24 August, and a video of the incident went viral the next day. 

Denying the Muslim boy was targeted because of his religion, Tyagi initially seemed contrite, saying that she was sorry about the violence suffered by the boy, and what she said was that “Mohammadan” mothers should not take their kids to their maternal homes because it affects their studies.  

“I am handicapped, so I made some students slap him so that he would start doing his homework," she said. "The child's cousin was sitting in the class. The video was recorded by him, which was later distorted.”

As the matter got more and more politicised on 25 August, she changed her position, telling NDTV, “I am not ashamed. I have served the people of this village as a teacher. They all are with me.”

“They have made laws, but we need to control the children in schools,” she said. “This is how we tackle them.” 

A Tutored Interview 

When Article 14 reached Khubbapur village on 26 August, villagers knew about the incident and directed reporters where Irshad and the teacher lived, a five-minute walk from each other. 

A few metres away from the rusted gate in front of his house, Irshad was standing with a reporter from a news channel holding a microphone and tutoring him about what to say to his questions. 

While waiting our turn for an interview, the reporter told him, “You should also say that action should be taken against those who made the video viral” and that “you don't want anything but peace in the village”.

In the interview that followed, the reporter twice asked, since it was a village of Hindus and Muslims, what Irshad would say about keeping the peace. Irshad said this should not be made a Hindu-Muslim issue.

 “Yes, this is a village of a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims,” he said. “And peace has always been there in this village. We also appeal for peace and that this should not be made a Hindu-Muslim issue.”

In the aftermath of the incident, before it received widespread attention and condemnation, Irshad had said, “The compromise was we would not pursue an investigation, and they returned our fee. We won’t send our children to this school.”

The farm labourer, who works in the sugarcane fields of more affluent Hindu farmers, said his nephew, seven-year-old S, had told him that his classmates hit him, but Irshad did not understand what it meant until he saw the video of his son being beaten. 

“…I saw him crying, and the teacher asking the kids to beat him harder,” said Irshad about the video with his son. 

An FIR Registered 

After widespread outrage, the UP police registered a first information report (FIR) under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 505 (statement made to incite any class or community of persons to commit any offence against any other class or community) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, against Tripta Tyagi.

The FIR, based on Irshad’s complaint registered on 26 August 2023, said, “Teacher Tripta Tyagi instructed other students to take turns and hit my 7-8-year-old son when he couldn't recall multiplication tables. She even encouraged them to hit harder. My nephew Nadim who was in the school at that time for some reason, recorded the video of the incident and shared it with me. In the video, the teacher made derogatory comments about Muslim women and said, ‘All these Muslim kids, their mothers leave, and it affects their education.’ My son also informed me about verbal abuse.”

The public relations officer of Muzaffarnagar’s superintendent of police (SP),  Sanjeev Suman, told Newslaundry that “serious sections of the IPC” were not pressed against the teacher as she “did not have malicious intentions”. 

Not A Hindu-Muslim Matter: Victim's Father

As we looked at the many chairs Irshad had arranged for politicians and reporters making their way to his house and chose three of them,  Irshad said it wasn't a Hindu-Muslim matter. 

When we asked him about her reference to Muslims, Irshad said, “She was saying that Mohammadan ladies take their kids to their maternal homes, due to which the studies of the kids are affected.” 

“This is not a Hindu-Muslim matter,” he said. 

Irshad said that he went to meet the teacher in the afternoon on the same day (24 August), and she was rude to him and unwilling to accept her mistake.”

“Change in her behaviour can be seen before and after the video went viral,” said Irshad. 

“When I met her on the 24th, she talked rudely. She was not ready to accept her mistake. She said that this is the rule in her school," he said. "When I told her I had not seen such a rule in any school, she said threateningly,  ‘My brother is a minister. I am from Haryana. What if you have the video? You can do nothing to me.’ But after the video went viral, although she has not apologised to us personally, we have heard she has apologised.” 

Earlier that day, 26 August 2023, a farm leader, Naresh Tikait, and the national president of the Bhartiya Kisan Union, which was at the forefront of the farmers’ movement against Modi’s farm laws, met Irshad and said he would get the FIR expunged. 

But Irshad told us, “I want legal action against the teacher.”

Parade Of Politicians 

When we finished speaking with him, the next in line was Meerut’s Congress president, Avnish Kajla, who, we heard saying, had come “with a message of love and blamed the hateful politics of BJP” for the incident. 

As the evening wore on, a former BJP leader Shrikant Tyagi, arrested in August 2022 for allegedly assaulting a woman in his residential society in Noida, arriving with three SUVs and going to meet Irshad. 

Earlier in the day, Muzaffarnagar BJP member of Parliament (MP) Sanjeev Balyan also came to the village and met the teacher.  “It is a minor issue that has been resolved," Balyan told the media. "Corporal punishment is common in this area. A divyang (person with a disability) teacher doing social service should not be dragged into it.” 

Children Speak 

When Article 14 spoke with A*, Irshad’s son who was beaten and asked him what the teacher had said, the seven-year-old repeated what his father said—“She said that mothers of Mohammadan (Muslim) kids take their kids to their maternal homes due to which they forget what has been taught to them.”

Now that his father has withdrawn him from the Neha Public School, A* said he would study in a  primary school run by the government in the village. 

His cousin, seven-year-old S*, who was similarly hit by his fellow students four days earlier, said, “The teacher asked other kids to beat me the same way,” he said. 

S* said, “She does not do this with Hindu kids. She only does this with Mohammadan kids.”

Neighbour Speaks

Irshad’s neighbour, Mohammad Rizwan, a farm labourer, said he did not believe it to be a Hindu-Muslim matter, and it was common practice for teachers to beat up students who made mistakes. 

In the video, Tripta Tyagi scolded a student for not hitting the Muslim student hard enough and asked the other students to beat him harder. 

Rizwan said Tripta Tyagi did this because the first student who beat A* was Muslim. 

“The first kid who beat him was a Muslim. That’s why he beat him softly. Then, the teacher asked Hindu kids to beat him harder,” he said.

A*'s 21-year-old cousin, Mursalin, said, “The teacher could have said that A* goes to his maternal home and forgets his studies. She didn’t need to take the name of the whole community. That was wrong.”

Matter Closed 

While returning from Irshad’s house, we tried speaking with different groups of villagers, but they all said the matter was now closed. 

At Tripta Tyagi's home, a five-minute walk from Irshad’s, 20-25 people from the Tyagi community were there to protect her. 

Police personnel were also present.

“This is not a Hindu-Muslim matter,” said Rahul Tyagi, the 38-year-old farmer. “The media has made this into one.” 

When we asked Rahul Tyagi about the teacher referring to Mohammadans, he said, “This is a way of talking in villages. If one is a chamar’s son, we call him chamar’s son. If one is a kumhar’s son, we call him kumhar’s son. Similarly, she called the kid Mohammadan’s son. This is the way we talk. How is this wrong? These Dalits themselves mention their caste in their forms to take the benefit of reservation, but when we call them chamar’s son, they say it’s wrong.” 

While we spoke with  Rahul Tyagi, a passing man stopped and said, “A Muslim kid has been beaten. That’s why you have come. If a Hindu kid would have been beaten, no media would have come.”

Regarding the incident where Shrikant Tyagi was arrested, Rahul Tyagi said, “This is another incident to tarnish our Tyagi community. When Shrikant Tyagi abused that woman, nobody saw that the woman was also characterless. But our whole Tyagi community was blamed and maligned for that incident.”

While waiting to speak with the teacher, people from the Tyagi community said she was not home. 

Eventually, as the crowd felt seemingly hostile, we decided to leave. 

(Kaushik Raj is a freelance journalist and poet based in Delhi.)

(Vipul Kumar is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. He reports on human rights and the intersection of society and technology. Twitter @vipulizm.)

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