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Journalism of Courage
Days after a Rajasthan minister suspended three government school teachers in Kota district over conversion claims, one of them told The Indian Express that the controversy stemmed from a case of mistaken identity. His clarification came on a day when dozens of students from the Khajuri Odpur government school in Sangod block marched to the office of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate against the suspensions. In videos shared on social media, the students said there was no instance of religious conversion in their school and that their teachers should be reinstated.
The teacher, Mirza Mujahid, said there were three students of the same name in the school, two of whom were Muslim. “In this confusion, the (third) student’s religion column was changed. But that was a human error,” he said.
The action against the teachers came after a religious group in Sangod block, Sarva Hindu Samaj, sent a complaint to the state’s Education Minister Madan Dilawar. According to the complaint, a former girl student, who was Hindu, was mentioned as Muslim in the school register. The girl, after passing out from the school, had eloped with a Muslim man from the village, which triggered the controversy over the school allegedly marking her religion as Muslim.
Mujahid said: “The girl who eloped had passed out from the school and we have never met her. This incident has no link to the school. We are waiting for the truth to be revealed in the investigation.”
The other two suspended teachers are Firoz Khan and Shabana. While the action against Mujahid and Khan came on Thursday, Shabana was suspended on Saturday.
The religious outfit had claimed that the teachers tried to convert students and forced them to perform the namaz. The students who were protesting Monday, around 50 in number, denied these allegations.
A source from the school, who requested anonymity, said: “The parents of the girl who eloped with the Muslim man complained to the religious group. The girl is already an adult and has refused to come back to her parents. The religion mentioned in the school register was a case of human error but the form was signed by the girl’s father. They should have been cautious too. And the girl’s religion was Hindu in all other school documents.”
School principal Kamlesh Bairwa said he has never heard of any conversion in the school. “These teachers have been teaching here for a long time. I was posted three years ago and I have never seen any such activity. I don’t know what will be the result of the investigation but I am sure things will be cleared up,” said Bairwa. The sarpanch, Sushila Kanwar, also said she had never heard of any incident of religious conversion in the village.
On Friday, the minister had released a video statement on the issue: “We got information that the name of a Hindu girl in secondary school was changed to a Muslim name. There is a conspiracy of religious conversion and love jihad going on in the area. When we got the information, we took steps and suspended two teachers and an investigation is ongoing into another teacher. After investigation, if it is found that they were involved in these acts, the three of them will be terminated from the job…”
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