Several Muslim students from a government school in Delhi have made serious allegations of physical abuse and discrimination by their teachers.
The students of Sarvodaya Bal Vidhyalaya in the Nand Nagri area of northeast Delhi wrote their complaints in a letter to Supreme Court lawyer Ashok Agarwal.
The students who wished to remain anonymous revealed in the letter how they were subjected to Islamophobic slurs and physical beatings. The teachers forced them to chant ‘Jai Shree Ram’, made them go naked and thrashed mercilessly behind the closed doors of the school’s washroom and recorded everything. The teachers threatened to make the videos public if they complained to anyone.
The students named Adarsh Sharma, Vikas Kumar, and others among the abusers. The letter reads, “Kindly take action against Adarsh Sharma ji and Vikas Kumar and others. Departmental action should be taken, and a police case should be filed after removing them from the school so that students don’t face discrimination at the school.”
The letter also revealed how the Muslim and Dalit students were made to sit in the back of the classroom. Muslim students were told that they should leave the country while Dalits were told that they had no right to get an education.
Advocate Agarwal visited their school on August 7, when the students told him about the discrimination they were facing. The lawyer sent a copy of the letter to L-G, the chief minister, the director of the Education Department, and the chairman of the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
Advocate Agrawal notified the ex-Director of Education, Mr. RN Sharma, after he was told by an eleventh-class student that the teachers were discriminating only due to their religious identity, but no action was taken.
Reportedly, he also notified the principal, but instead of taking action against the teachers, the principal only informed them of the complaints, which only made the students’ lives worse, as the teachers troubled them even more.
In his letter to Chief Minister Atishi Singh, Agrawal requested a high-level probe into the matter. He alleged that such discrimination is happening because of a particular party’s agenda. According to him, the government doesn’t dare to help the Muslim students as doing so might affect their political status.
