Classmates slap girl 168 times at teacher’s behest

JHABUA/BHOPAL: A Class 6 student at Navoday school in Thandla, Jhabua district, was allegedly slapped 168 times by her classmates as punishment 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 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 teacher Manoj Verma 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 work, but her classmates had slapped her 168 times by then.

Verma allegedly told the father that he did not beat the girl personally as 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.

School principal Shiv Sagar allegedly admitted before the father that Verma asked the students to slap the girl. 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”.

THE PUNISHMENT OVER A PERIOD OF SIX DAYS WAS BECAUSE THE CLASS 6 STUDENT DIDN’T FINISH HER HOMEWORK IN TIME