UP slap row: Charge under Justice Juvenile Act invoked against accused woman teacher

The Uttar Pradesh Police has added Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act to the FIR against a woman school teacher accused of ordering her students to slap a Muslim classmate for not doing his homework.

Muzaffarnagar: The Uttar Pradesh Police has added Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act to the FIR against a woman school teacher accused of ordering her students to slap a Muslim classmate for not doing his homework.

The Section 75 of the Act provides for punishment if any person having control of child assaults, abandons, abuses or willfully neglects the child, police officials said. The punishment under this section is rigorous imprisonment of not less than three years which may go up to 10 years and a fine of Rs 5 lakh.

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The teacher, Tripta Tyagi, was booked on August 26 on the complaint of the boy’s family under IPC sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) — both non-cognisable offences.

The Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act has been added to the FIR against the school teacher in the ongoing probe against her, Circle Officer Ravi Shankar told PTI.

The action against Tyagi was taken after a video, which went viral on August 25, showed her asking her students to slap the Class 2 boy at Neha Public School in Khubbapur village of Muzaffarnagar district and also making a communal remark.

The video elicited strong words from several political leaders and also from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, the apex child rights body, demanding action against the accused teacher.

In her defence, Tyagi said the video has been tampered with in order to stoke tensions. She claimed that the video was shot by an uncle of the boy.

Tyagi said though it was wrong on her part to get a student slapped by his classmates, she was forced to do it as she is handicapped and was not able to stand up and reach the student who had not done his assignment.