Student thrashed for not saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’

An 11-year-old madrasa student was beaten up in Purulia district of West Bengal on the pretext that he refused to say ‘Jai Shri Ram’. The police have initiated a probe following a complaint by the boy’s father on Thursday.

The madrasa student alleged that he was stopped on his way to the seminary in Nituria village of Purulia. First he was asked his name and then told to say ‘Jai Shri Ram’. As he refused, he was “brutally beaten up”.

‘Four men involved’

“I was beaten for quite a few minutes before one of them said that ‘if he dies, we would be in trouble’ and let me go,” the student told local journalists. Four men were involved in the incident, the student said. The boy’s father took him back home from the madrasa and said that he was severely “traumatised.”

While the Trinamool Congress blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party for “spreading communal hatred and extremism”, BJP officials in the district said the Trinamool was “organising such incidents to tarnish the BJP’s image.”