Another incident of a Muslim teacher being suspended in haste without any enquiry has been reported from Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura, where a Bharatiya Janata Party leader accused the headmaster of a government primary school of urging students to offer namaz and of not having them recite the national anthem, leading to his suspension within a day of the complaint being filed.
The headmaster, Jaan Mohammed, aged 52, who has been posted at the primary school in Naujheel since 2007, was informed of his suspension on January 31, even as no preliminary verification or fact-finding exercise was conducted before the punitive action was taken, according to reports.
Mohammed has denied all allegations levelled against him and has maintained that no such complaints had ever been raised during his long tenure at the school.
The complaint was filed by Durgesh, the head of the BJP’s Bajna town unit and a former village chief, who claimed that local villagers had approached him with concerns regarding the headmaster’s conduct, following which he wrote to the block education officer seeking action.
In his complaint, the BJP leader alleged that, in the presence of the headmaster, preachers associated with the Islamic organisation Tablighi Jamaat were invited to the school and that they exerted pressure on children to adopt Islam, allegations that Mohammed has categorically rejected.
Despite the gravity of the claims, the headmaster was suspended within 24 hours of the complaint being submitted, a move that has raised questions about due process, particularly as no enquiry or on-site verification preceded the decision.
Education department officials later stated that a two-member committee has now been constituted to examine the matter, even as the suspension order remains in effect.
Officials in the Basic Shiksha Adhikari’s office in Mathura said that the committee would look into all aspects of the allegations and submit its findings, although they did not specify a timeline for the completion of the enquiry.
The decision to initiate an enquiry only after suspending the headmaster has drawn attention to what critics describe as a recurring pattern of swift administrative action against Muslim teachers following complaints rooted in communal allegations.
The primary school at Naujheel has a total of 235 students, of whom 89 are Muslims, while the remaining children are Hindus, and the school employs eight staff members, seven of whom are Hindus, according to official records cited in reports.