Allegedly killing a Dalit pupil over a spelling error in India.
The culprit has left the region as the 15-year-old dies from his wounds at a hospital in northern Uttar Pradesh.
In the midst of violent protests brought on by the incident, police in India are looking for a teacher suspected of killing a Dalit pupil over a spelling error.
According to a police report from his father, Nikhil Dohre’s high school instructor kicked and hit him with a rod till he passed out earlier this month after he spelled “social” incorrectly on an exam.
The culprit has left the region, and the 15-year-old died from his injuries on Monday at a hospital in northern Uttar Pradesh.
“He is fleeing.” However, we will apprehend him quickly, “police official Mahendra Pratap Singh told AFP.
The Dalit population, historically referred to as the “untouchables,” occupies the lowest caste in India and has long been the target of bigotry and discrimination.
According to Pavni Mittal of Al Jazeera, who was reporting from New Delhi, violent protests erupted in the Auraiya district, the scene of the attack, calling for the teacher’s arrest before the boy’s body was cremated.
The boy’s instructor allegedly hit him a few weeks ago for a spelling mistake, according to the boy’s relatives. “This has now been branded a caste-based hate crime by the family,” she claimed.
On Monday, hundreds of people marched into the streets and set a police car on fire.
Policeman Singh reported that about a dozen demonstrators had been taken into custody.
Police Superintendent Charu Nigam told reporters that “we utilised force to disperse the throng and the situation quickly came under control.”
According to Mittal, there is a growing resentment against casteism and caste-based violence in India, where untouchability is “illegal but still pervasive.”
Five-caste-based hate crimes occur in the nation on average once per hour, according to government statistics, she said.
The incident, according to Riya Singh, co-founder of the Dalit Women’s Fight organisation, is “a reflection of the rooted caste animosity that upper or dominant caste people have against Dalits,” she told Al Jazeera.
She claimed that the animosity was still so intense that it even affected small children and led to their deaths.
According to Singh, the nation should acknowledge that there is caste bias and that some people use crime and violence to support their bias. With this realization, she continued, “we can only move forward.”
