UJJAIN: A group of students was beaten up with sticks by their schoolmates and some adults in MP’s Agar Malwa district on Wednesday following a dispute over chanting ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’.
The attackers, around 20 of them, also beat up onlookers, including a school teacher and a woman, in Badod town of the district.
The row began during school assembly when a group of students refused to chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ at the end of the National Anthem recital, Badod police station in-charge Vivek Kanodia said. As the students exchanged heated words, the school administration interfered and settled the matter. The students, who had questioned their schoolmates for refusing to hail the motherland, were returning home when they came under attack, said Kanodia.
The main complainant told police that the attackers threatened them with dire consequences if they insisted on asking others to chant ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’. The alleged attackers included school students and adult members of a community. A schoolteacher, who was passing by, recorded the attack on his mobile phone, but became a target of the angry mob.
18 people booked for rioting: Cop
He and three others, including a woman, were beaten up, the inspector said. The teacher works in a different government school and is from an SC community.
“On the complaint of the student and school teacher, 18 people have been booked for rioting, illegal restraint, using obscene language and under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. Nine of them have been named in the FIR,” Kanodia said.
Four suspects – Azhar, Raja, Shakeel and Arif – have been arrested and remanded in jail. Police are deployed in strength in the locality to prevent any flare-up, Kanodia said.
