Teacher assaults 8-yr-old Dalit boy

LUCKNOW: An assistant teacher allegedly brutally assaulted an eight-year-old Dalit schoolboy at Tapariya village in Mahoba which went to polls in the fourth phase of the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh assembly election on Thursday.

The teacher, a Brahmin, has been arrested. The assault has caused outrage in the dalit-dominated village in Bundelkhand region which elects 19 MLAs to the Uttar Pradesh assembly.

The incident took place on Wednesday, a day before polling, when Akhilesh Kumar Pathak, the assistant teacher, repeatedly hit the Class 2 student with a thick stick causing him to fall unconscious after the student returned late to class after having gone home to relieve himself as the school toilet was locked.

The teacher ignored the boy’s repeated pleas for mercy and tried to flee when the student fainted but his escape was prevented by villagers who rushed to the scene on hearing other students raise an alarm.

The boy sustained two fractures on his forearm and a deep injury on his scalp. The villagers dialled 100, and within minutes, a UP 100 patrol car rushed to the spot, sending the boy first to a primary health centre at Panwadi village and then to the Mahoba district hospital where his forearm was put in a plaster cast and his head bandaged.

The boy’s classmates told the police that the teacher had made ‘casteist’ remarks against him.

“We have arrested the teacher after filing an FIR against him. He has been booked under the Juvenile Justice Act and the SC/ST Act too,” said Surendra Singh, station officer (SO) of Mahobkanth police station.

Asked why the boy had to go home to relieve himself, Poonam Dwivedi, chairperson of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), Mahoba, said: “It is a common practice here for teachers to keep the toilet locked and retain the keys. So, students have to either go home or to the bushes.”