Three educators, including the headmaster of a government primary school in Shimla district, Himachal Pradesh, have been charged with allegedly assaulting an eight-year-old Dalit boy and placing a live scorpion in his pants.
The accused, headmaster Devendra and teachers Babu Ram and Kritika Thakur, are employed at a school in the Khaddapani area of Rohru sub-division. According to a police complaint submitted by the child’s father, the first-grade student has endured ongoing physical abuse for nearly a year. The father asserts that the repeated beatings resulted in bleeding from his son’s ear and damage to his eardrum.
One reported incident involved the teachers taking the child to the school toilet and inserting a scorpion into his clothing. A case has been registered under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, related to wrongful confinement, voluntary causing of hurt, criminal intimidation, and collective criminal acts.
The teachers also face charges under the Juvenile Justice Act and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The boy’s father further alleges that the teachers threatened his son with arrest if he disclosed the assaults and warned him that they would “burn him.”
Additionally, the father accused the school of practicing caste-based segregation, claiming that Dalit and Nepali students are separated from upper-caste students during meals.
Suraj Kumar Bauddh, founder of Mission Ambedkar, condemned the incident, stating, “Teachers are generally revered, but teachers embittered by caste are no less than demons,” characterizing it as a “blot on humanity.” He called for stringent action under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, as well as legislation aimed at protecting children from cruelty.
Bauddh urged Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu to address this incident, highlighting the troubling prevalence of caste-based violence against the Dalit community in Himachal Pradesh. He criticized the state government and police for failing to deter such acts of aggression.
This incident follows the recent suicide of a 12-year-old Dalit boy in Shimla’s Rohru block, who took his life after enduring humiliation and assault for entering an upper-caste home. The Himachal High Court and the State Scheduled Caste Commission intervened in that case to ensure accountability.
The details of this report were first published by Maktoob Media.
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