A teacher in IIT-Kharagpur hurled abuses at students during an online class as some of them had allegedly not stood up for the National Anthem and did not say “Bharat Mata ki Jai". Students had recorded the teacher abusing them and their families and uploaded the video on social media platforms.
In the viral video, the teacher identified as Seema Singh from the department of humanities and social sciences can be seen screaming and calling the students of a preparatory class, ‘shameless’ and “bloody b*^#@$%!.
Notably, a preparatory class is a batch of students from the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and persons with disability categories, who are unable to get direct admission to IIT through JEE Advanced.
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“This [standing up for the national anthem] is the bare minimum you can do for the country. You have to stand for two minutes in the honour of the national anthem…you can do it…this is also on your parents…do you have any shame, you shameless creatures of prep course?,” Professor Seema Singh can be heard screaming as she threatens to give zeroes as scores for all the 128 students in the class.
She further dared students to complain against her, go to the “minority affair committee” or “ministry of education”.
The two-minute video clip of the incident has emerged on various social media platforms and sent shockwaves in the IIT community. People on Twitter slammed her behaviour and demanded action against her with the hashtag #End_Casteism_In_IIT:
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The Mumbai chapter of the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC)—a student organisation demanded that the professor be terminated and booked under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, according to Hindustan Times. “She is in complete cognisance of her actions and proclaims immunity from any disciplinary actions and consequences,” APPSC said in a statement.
“A few hours ago, I got an email in this regard. In the IIT system, we do not support such language. We will take some action,” Tamal Nath, registrar, told The Hindu.
