Teacher's slap and student's death reignite India's corporal punishment debate

New Delhi, India - Around noon last Thursday, Krishna Prasad received a phone call from a friend saying his six-year-old son, Pranay Teja, had collapsed at school and was taken to a public hospital. By the time Prasad, a home cook, reached King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam, a coastal city in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, Teja was dead.

Teja had been slapped by his kindergarten teacher for allegedly not completing his homework. Classroom security camera footage shows the boy standing in line with a tense expression, seemingly pleading with the teacher. The teacher pulled him close and slapped him. Seconds later, Teja collapsed onto her. Other teachers rushed to give him CPR before taking him to the hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.

Teja's family said the private school had a history of physically punishing students. The state education department called the death "extremely unfortunate and heartbreaking" and set up a three-member committee to investigate. Teja's death, still under investigation, has highlighted a question India has never fully answered: why, more than a decade after corporal punishment was banned in classrooms, is hitting children still so common that a boy could be beaten for not doing his homework?

India banned corporal punishment in schools after enacting the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act in 2009, effective the following year. The law explicitly prohibits "physical punishment" and "mental harassment" of children. The Juvenile Justice Act of 2015 also criminalizes cruelty against children by those responsible for them, including teachers. Courts have repeatedly affirmed that corporal punishment is inconsistent with children's right to dignity.

However, a gap remains between the law and the classroom, especially in schools serving poor, rural, and marginalized communities, where researchers say corporal punishment is routine. A 2018 study by the nonprofit Agrasar found that nearly 80% of low-income students surveyed in Gurugram, near the capital New Delhi, reported being hit several times a week, and most parents accepted it and also used it at home.

Kawalpreet Kaur, a lawyer in New Delhi, said the problem lies in weak enforcement of the law. "The RTE Act clearly prohibits physical punishment and mental harassment, but it does not create a strong independent criminal offense. Cases tend to be pushed into general criminal law, treated as minor incidents like 'hurt' or 'discipline.' School administrations protect teachers, discourage complaints, and pressure families to settle quietly, burying allegations."

Kaur also pointed to the judiciary's reluctance to prosecute teachers. She cited an example of a teacher in the southern state of Kerala, accused of caning a sixth-grader. A court granted bail and suggested the teacher "carry a cane" as a psychological deterrent, while cautioning against over-prosecuting "trivial matters." A similar case in neighboring Karnataka state, involving a teacher accused of beating another sixth-grader with a stick, is under court consideration of a petition to quash proceedings. Kaur argued such cases ultimately legitimize corporal punishment under the guise of "parental consent," contrary to legal provisions.

Many in India believe corporal punishment entered schools after British colonizers occupied the subcontinent in the 19th century. But historian Ruchika Sharma said the practice predates British rule by centuries, due to India's rigid caste system, a hierarchical ranking from Brahmins at the top to "Dalits"—historically mistreated communities, formerly called "untouchables"—at the bottom.

Sharma said the Arthashastra, an ancient Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, prescribed punishments for farmers who failed to pay taxes, while the Manusmriti, another ancient Hindu text, laid out caste-based penalties for disrespectful behavior. According to Sharma, the Manusmriti recommended that a "Shudra"—a person of the lowest caste—who insulted a Brahmin should have his tongue cut off, while a "Kshatriya"—a warrior caste—who committed a similar offense would only be fined.

Sharma said the British did not invent corporal punishment in India but standardized and systematized it within the education system. "The reason the British matter is simply that the Indian education system learned a great deal from them." Both the East India Company and later the British crown built an apparatus of order based on the whip, formalized through laws such as the Whipping Acts of 1864 and 1909. In that context, British-founded schools carried the same assumption that flogging was a legitimate tool for moral discipline.

Despite the ban, deaths from teacher beatings continue. In August 2022, Inder Meghwal, a 9-year-old Dalit student in Rajasthan state, died weeks after being beaten by a teacher for touching a water pitcher reserved for the teacher. A few weeks earlier, in Uttar Pradesh state, a Muslim couple alleged their son was beaten to death by school staff after he was accused, along with two other boys, of stealing a watch. The boy's mother said he was singled out because the other two boys were Hindu.

In August 2023, a teacher in Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, ordered the class to slap Mohammad Altamash, a 7-year-old Muslim student. In a viral video, the teacher, Tripta Tyagi, a high-caste Hindu, used a derogatory term for Muslims and said Muslim children should be eliminated, urging other students to hit harder. The incident sparked outrage, with many experts saying the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh was fostering "hate politics," a charge the party denied. The Supreme Court later ordered the boy transferred to another school, with the state covering his education costs.

Lawyer Ratna Singh, associated with the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), said school abuse stems from a fundamental power imbalance compounded by low legal awareness. Teachers often believe "they have the right to treat children however they want" because children rarely complain. CJP, which recently led nationwide anti-government protests, is campaigning for reforms in public schools, mostly in rural areas.

Kaur said the narrow legal framework on corporal punishment is a problem. "Dalit and Adivasi (indigenous) students have specific protections under the Atrocities Act, but Muslim students have no equivalent identity-based protection. Even under the RTE Act, school administrations often focus on the physical act while ignoring discriminatory motives."

According to Kaur, discrimination is rarely a single event but accumulates through repeated insults, stereotypes, and selective punishments. "A single incident may seem minor, but repeated actions convey to marginalized students that they do not belong here." She proposed mandatory reporting mechanisms, independent complaint channels outside school management, and attention to patterns of behavior rather than isolated events. "The real gap in Indian law is the failure to recognize the structural and continuous nature of discrimination as it moves from classroom to school administration and courts."

Nearly a week after Teja's death, the Andhra Pradesh state education department said the investigation is ongoing, and "awareness programs" are planned to help teachers treat students with more "sensitivity, responsibility, and humanity." For Prasad's family, that promise sits alongside a more immediate demand: accountability and acknowledgment that what happened at their son's school was not an isolated act.