A teacher of the Kamarajar government boys higher secondary school recently allegedly physically assaulted a Class XI student on the grounds that the latter belonged to the scheduled caste (SC) community.

A Class XII student said, on the conditions of anonymity, "The physics teacher who recently joined our school this academic year had been singling out and behaving biased toward students from the SC community." Recently, the teacher cornered a Class XI SC student from GRP Street, Villupuram, and after the latter questioned why he was treated harshly, he thrashed him for no reason, the student added.

Reliable sources from the school said that the issue was allegedly covered up to avoid controversy, and that the boy was given treatment at the government hospital.

A group of caste Hindu students from the same class said that they were forced to write a letter speaking ill of the SC student, and submit it to the headmaster. "We are all friends and there is never a caste bias among us. But the teacher is trying to ruin unity and equality among us. We are scared to inform higher officials fearing consequences."

K Umapathi, a social worker, told TNIE, "The headmaster is also in a tight spot because few teachers had threatened him by alleging lack of discipline on the campus. The issue needs to come out in order to supervise such evil practices within government school campuses."

A fake message claiming 'students in the school are not following uniform rules and illegally using drugs on the campus while the HM did not take any action for this', surfaced on social media recently. The message was discovered to be fake after TNIE paid a spot visit to the school and found nothing as the claim.

Responding to the issue, CEO Krishnapriya told TNIE that an immediate investigation will be done and action will be taken.