The Hindu boy’s father filed a complaint stating that the accused teacher, Shaista, forced a Muslim student to slap his son– a Class 5 student– after he failed to answer a question she asked.

Sambhal (UP): In a rerun of the infamous Muzaffarnagar incident, a school teacher was arrested on Thursday for allegedly ordering a Muslim student to slap his Hindu classmate in a private school in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district.

According to the police, the incident took place on Tuesday at a private school in Dugawar village under the Asmoli police station limits in Sambhal district.

An official said the Hindu boy’s father filed a complaint stating that the accused teacher, Shaista, forced a Muslim student to slap his son– a Class 5 student– after he failed to answer a question she asked.

Based on the complaint, an FIR under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc) and 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), Additional SP Shrish Chandra told news agency PTI.

The accused teacher has been arrested, the official added.

In his complaint, the boy’s father said that the teacher’s actions hurt his son’s religious feelings, the SP said, adding that further investigation into the incident is underway.

The incident bears eerie similarities to the last month’s infamous incident at Khubbapur village in Muzaffarnagar where a private school teacher, Tripta Tyagi, forced Hindu students to repeatedly slap their Muslim classmate for “not doing homework”.

A video of the incident had gone viral on social media, showing the students taking turns to slap their classmate as the boy stands there crying in humiliation and pain while the primary school teacher, Tripta Tyagi, keeps egging his classmates to continue the assault.

“Jitne bhi Mohammedan bachhe hai (all the Muslim students here)…” the teacher can clearly be heard in the video as she encourages other students hit the boy with more force. “Why don’t you hit him with force,” Tyagi tells one of the students after he hits the boy.

Tyagi had justified her vile act under the garb of “disciplining the child” and that she asked the students to slap their classmate as she was “handicapped” and could not do so herself. She was later booked under IPC sections 323 (voluntary causing hurt) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace).

On September 25, the Supreme Court said that there cannot be any quality education if a student is sought to be penalised on the ground that he belongs to a particular community as it pulled up the Uttar Pradesh government for shoddy probe in the Muzaffarnagar case.

The top court directed the UP government to appoint a senior IPS officer within a week to probe the case.

(With PTI inputs)