Father alleges caste-based discrimination by teachers at the school in Rohru; Nepali, Dalit students made to sit separately from Rajputs during meals, he says.A boy from the Dalit community allegedly faced casteism along with physical assault, including a scorpion being placed in his pants, by the headmaster and two other teachers at a government school in Shimla district, police said on Sunday.
All three teachers have been booked for repeatedly assaulting the eight-year-old boy. In the police complaint, the father of the boy — a Class 1 student of Government Primary School at Khaddapani area in Rohru sub-division of Shimla district — accused headmaster Devendra and teachers Babu Ram and Kritika Thakur of frequently assaulting his son for almost a year. The beating caused the child’s ear to bleed and damaged his eardrum at one point, he said.
The father also alleged that the teachers took his son to the school’s toilet, where they placed a scorpion in his pants. Police have registered a case under sections for confinement, assault and criminal intimidation, of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and for cruelty towards a child under the Juvenile Justice Act. Sections of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act have also been imposed as the boy was subjected to forcibly removing his clothes, and similar acts derogatory to human dignity.
According to the father, the situation escalated on October 30, after the headmaster threatened to expel the child from the school. The headmaster allegedly said to the boy about his family, “We will burn you.” The boy’s father was also warned not to lodge a police complaint or post about the incident on social media, or he would have to “lose his life” (“jaan se haath dhona”).
He further alleged caste-based discrimination by teachers at the school. Nepali and Harijan (Dalit) students were made to sit separately from Rajput students during meals, he said. This is not the first incident of teachers assaulting students or caste discrimination in Rohru.
Last week, a teacher at Government Primary School in Gawana area of Rohru was suspended for beating a student with a prickly bush. Earlier, a 12-year-old Dalit boy allegedly died by suicide at Limda village in Rohru after some upper caste women locked him up inside a cowshed for entering their house.
