The 15-year-old died of his injuries at a hospital in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and the defendant fled the area.
Indian police are hunting for a teacher who allegedly beat a Dalit student to death for a spelling mistake, police said, amid violent protests sparked by the incident.
Nikhil Dohre was beaten and kicked by his high school teacher until he lost consciousness earlier this month after misspelled the word “society” during an exam, according to a police complaint from his father. .
The 15-year-old died of his injuries on Monday at a hospital in northern Uttar Pradesh state, and the defendant fled the area.
Police officer Mahendra Pratap Singh told AFP news agency: “He is on the run, but we will arrest him soon.
The Dalit community – formerly known as the “untouchables” – is at the bottom of India’s caste system and has been subject to prejudice and discrimination for centuries.
Reporting from New Delhi, Al Jazeera’s Pavni Mittal said violent protests broke out in the Auraiya district, the site of the attack, demanding the teacher’s arrest before cremating the boy’s body.
“The family said the boy was beaten by his teacher a few weeks ago because of a spelling mistake. Now the family has called this a class-based hate crime,” she said.
Hundreds of people took to the streets on Monday and set a police car on fire. Singh police said about a dozen protesters were arrested.
“We used force to quell the crowd and the situation was quickly brought under control,” Police Superintendent Charu Nigam told reporters.
Mittal said there is growing anger against caste and caste-based violence in India, where untouchability is “prohibited but pervasive”.
“According to government data, hate crimes based on the five classes take place on average every hour across the country,” she said.
Riya Singh, co-founder of Dalit Women’s Struggle, told Al Jazeera that the incident was “a reflection of the inherent class hatred that those of the elite or ruling class oppose the Dalits.” “.
“The hatred is still so strong that it even reaches children and eventually kills them,” she said.
Singh said the country should accept that there is class bias and that people are using crime and violence to justify their class bias. “Only with this acknowledgment can we move forward.” she speaks.
