Manjula Devi, a government school teacher in Karnataka, was transferred, and a probe into her conduct wasinitiated after she told two Muslim children in her class to “go to Pakistan.”
Devi allegedly said Islamophobic things to two Class 5 pupils at a government school in Tipu Nagar, Shivamogga.
Nazrullah, the district unit head of the minority wing of the Janata Dal Secular, claims that on September 1, while Devi was teaching a class of 5, two pupils started fighting. The two Muslim boys were reprimanded by her, and she told them “This is not your country.”
“We were shocked after the children told us about the incident. We filed a complaint with the Deputy Director of Public Instruction (DDPI), and the department acted against the teacher,” Hindustan Times quotes Nazrullah as saying.
Block Education Officer B. Nagaraj, who investigated the incident, stated that other students in the class supported the complaint.
The teacher reportedly said to the students, ‘This is not your country; this is the country of Hindus. You should go to Pakistan. You are our slaves forever,” Nagraj said.
The incident came to light a week after the Uttar Pradesh Police registered a case against a private school teacher accused of making communal comments and encouraging her students to slap their Muslim classmates for not being able to recite a multiplication table in Muzaffarnagar district.
The incident came to light when, on August 25, a video of the teacher went viral in which she asked students in Class II to slap their Muslim classmates, triggering widespread condemnation.
A case was registered against the teacher on August 26 under sections 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) of the Indian Penal Code on the complaint of the victim’s family.
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