Javed Akhtar, Prakash Raj condemn Muzaffarnagar slap incident

Veteran screenwriter Javed Akhtar, and actors Renuka Shahane and Prakash Raj have called for strict action against a teacher in Uttar Pradesh who allegedly asked her students to slap a boy from a minority community.

A video showing the school teacher in Muzaffarnagar asking her students to slap the Muslim boy and making objectionable remarks against his community has gone viral on social media eliciting strong words from several quarters.

Taking to X, formerly Twitter, Akhtar said he hopes the teacher is "suspended immediately".

"A teacher ordering young children of the class to slap an 8-year child one by one and slap hard is nothing but a show of pure sadism and a perverse mind. I hope she is suspended immediately and an inquiry into is ugly incident has started," he wrote.

Shahane, voicing her concern over the incident, posted, "That vile teacher should be behind bars! Instead, she might just get a national teacher's award for promoting national integration! Kafkaesque!! Cry, my beloved country."

"The darkest side of HUMANITY we are getting into. aren't you worried #justasking," wrote Raj.

Actress Swastika Mukherjee and Varun Grover also reacted to the viral video.

"A teacher!!! This is what it has come to. How are we going to recover from this?" Mukherjee wrote.

Grover called the incident a "hate crime".

"Muzaffarnagar school hate crime is not a ‘new low’ and it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Hate crimes against Muslims have been the ‘new normal’ for a few years now and the TV news, with active support from the regime, is at the forefront of spreading & shielding this venom," he said.

Reacting to the incident, actor-comedian Vir Das wrote on X, "Historically, globally, people with ancient hatreds will poison young minds. They recognise they live in a world that is increasingly leaving them behind. It’s their last desperate shot at feeling valid. They take it, knowing they won’t live to see the damage they’ve done." The video that surfaced online on Friday showed the teacher, identified as Trapti Tyagi, asking the students of Class 2 of a private school in Khubbapur village to hit the child.

Muzaffarnagar Police on Saturday booked Tyagi in an FIR.