The Rajasthan Police have booked two teachers of a government school for murder after a Class 10 Dalit student allegedly died by suicide in the state’s Kotputali-Behror district, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.
On August 22, on a phone call to his father, Sachin Kuldeep had alleged that two of his teachers at the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in Paotah ave been making casteist slurs and humiliating him for several days.
Kuldeep also said that he had complained about the two teachers – Vivek and Rajkumar – to the principal and the vice principal of the school, but no action was taken. The principal allegedly said: “You will remain in the caste you belong to. What is wrong in it?”, The Indian Express reported.
A few hours after the call, Kuldeep, who used to stay in the residential school, died by hanging himself. His body was found inside a classroom by a member of the cleaning staff.
The student’s uncle Satyapal Kuldeep told The Indian Express that classmates of his nephew had also alleged that he had been humiliated and mentally and physically punished by the two teachers. “They used to threaten him with poor marks in examinations and spoiling his future,” Satyapal Kuldeep alleged.
Besides murder, the police have also charged the two teachers under sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The two teachers have been suspended from their jobs as well, NDTV reported.
“Everyone is telling their version of the story,” an unidentified police officer told NDTV. “After the postmortem report is in, we will be able to establish whether it is suicide or murder.”
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