LUCKNOW: In a shocking incident, a 15-year-old Dalit student was allegedly beaten to death by a teacher in the Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh, as per media reports.
The non-Dalit class teacher punished the class X student for spelling a word incorrectly during a social science class test.
The boy succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in Etawah district on Saturday night reportedly 19 days after the corporal punishment, apparently spurred by caste bias, was meted out to him.
The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the police stating that his son was beaten up by the teacher on September 7 with sticks and rods. He said that the boy kicked till he fell unconscious. The teen was under medical treatment but could not be saved.
A video shared by the boy's family, shot on a mobile phone in the hours after the alleged assault, shows him lying on what appears to be a stretcher. His eyes appear puffed, and the boy is barely conscious, reports NDTV.
The complaint filed with the police further pointed out that the teacher, in a bid to appease the family, to some extent helped them with financial assistance to meet the medical expenses of the boy. When it was not sufficient, the father tried to call the teacher but the latter refused to respond to the calls. When he confronted the teacher, he was abused with casteist slurs, the complaint added.
Auraiya police have formed special teams to nab the accused teacher.
"We are getting a post-mortem done by a panel of doctors," Charu Nigam, Auraiya's police chief, said in a video statement released on Twitter. The police have included sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in the First Information Report or FIR.