NEW DELHI: Sanoj Kumar joined a Delhi government school in 2018 as a computer science teacher. On Saturday, he was attacked by people he believes are kin of a student. The traumatised Kumar did not report for duty on Monday, in fact, is unsure of when he will be able to rejoin work at Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya in northeast Delhi’s Nand Nagri.
With the alleged assault taking place on the school premises, government school teachers are a worried lot. On Monday, many teachers displayed their protest with black armbands. The Government School Teachers Association (GSTA) also sought an appointment with lieutenant governor VK Saxena, while another teachers’ group met the director of education Himanshu Gupta.
An FIR has also been registered in the case based on the complaint of Kumar’s principal. "On Friday, I was taking a Mission Buniyad lesson in mathematics for Class VIII and scolded a student who was disrupting the class by refusing to sit down. I didn't know he would take my intervention so personally," said Kumar.
Elaborating on what happened on Saturday, 34-year-old Kumar said, "First, a woman who claimed to be the student’s grandmother slapped me. More from shock than anything, for nothing of this sort has happened to me in my four years as a teacher, I fell down. Others joined in and kicked me. I had bleeding wounds and swollen ears." The deputy director of education of the district visited Kumar in hospital on Saturday.
GSTA, however, is miffed that no one from Delhi government has expressed concern at the attack on Kumar. Ajay Veer Yadav, general secretary of GSTA said, "The ruling dispensation hasn’t sent out a strong message to the miscreants that the teachers cannot be subjected to attacks and harassment. In these cases, they don't say anything, but while conducting inspection, teachers are suspended without being given a chance to explain their position." Shoaib Rana, teacher at Government Boys' Senior Secondary School, Sunder Nagri, said even in his school the teachers would register their protest against the attack on Kumar.
This is not the first time that a teacher of a Delhi government school has been assaulted. In September 2021 in outer Delhi’s Ranhola, angry at a teacher asking him to “sit properly” in class, a student attacked him with an iron rod. In 2016, Mukesh Kumar was stabbed to death in Nangloi by a student, while in March 2015, a principal at Tughlaqabad was attacked and left bleeding by a student, who also vandalised the school property. Among other cases a teacher in Madanpur Khadar had to be admitted to the ICU after being beaten by parents and students in 2014, while in 2011, an Class VII student in Rohini pulled a 58-year-old teacher by her hair, kicked her and slashed her chin with a sharp object when she asked him to surrender his notes during an exam.
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