Lucknow: UP police on Monday registered an FIR under section 74 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 against Mohd Zubair, co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, for “disclosing the identity” of the eight-year-old Muslim boy who was slapped by his classmates on the instruction of a school teacher in Muzaffarnagar last week. Zubair had posted a video of the incident online but later claimed to have deleted it.
The case was registered at Mansoorpur police station. As per section 74 of the Act, the law makes it punishable to “disclose the identity of a child victim or witness of a crime, and those found guilty could be sentenced to six months in jail or be asked to pay a fine of up to Rs 2 lakh”.
On August 25, Zubair had put out a tweet of the boy’s father narrating that he had decided not to file a police complaint against the teacher, Tripta Tyagi, who runs Neha Public School, for making other students slap his son. Police said Zubair’s tweet had “disclosed the identity of the man and his minor son”. Hours later, he deleted the video after the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) asked people “not to share the video” and warned them that “revealing the identity of the boy was an offence”.
As to why only Zubair’s name was mentioned in the FIR, police said, “The case has been registered after a complaint by a local resident against Zubair. The district child welfare committee had also approached us in this regard. The matter is being investigated. Action will follow as per the law.”
In the purported video, Tyagi can be seen exhorting other students to assault a Muslim child who is crying while students step forward one by one to slap him. At one point in the video, the teacher scolded a student for not hitting him hard enough. Tyagi also appeared to make communal remarks.
Tyagi has been charged with non-cognizable offences under IPC. This means that police cannot arrest her without a warrant. Police also need permission from a court to start an investigation.
The boy’s mother said he cried for two days after the incident. “My son was tortured for over an hour that day. For two days he didn’t eat anything. He couldn’t sleep either. We had to take him to a doctor in Meerut,” she said.
Meanwhile, Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind, extending support to the boy’s family, got him admitted to another school, 5km away, on Monday.