The authorities in India vowed to take action after the release of the video it shows teacher asking her students to slap a Muslim classmate.

In the video this, which the police have confirmed as authentic and which has sparked strong reactions across India, shows the teacher at a private school in the state of Uttar Pradesh ordering her students to slap a 7-year-old classmate, allegedly for making a mistake in prep.

“Why do you hit him so soft? Hit him harder“, he is heard saying to the children, while the boy stands and cries.

A little later she asks her students to hit the boy on the body as well. “Start slapping him on the back (…) His face is starting to turn red, slap him on the back.”

Local police chief Satyanarayan Prazapat confirmed the authenticity of the video and said the Hindu teacher would be punished, noting that the boy’s family had taken legal action against her.

“We discovered that the teacher had said that Muslim students whose mothers did not pay enough attention to their lessons were spoiled“, he added.

Human rights groups have for years complained about the increase in intolerance and discrimination against Muslims in India, especially after the election of the nationalist, Hindu Narendra Modi as the country’s prime minister in 2014.

Uttar Pradesh has been ruled since 2017 by the BJP, the ruling party, and is headed by a Hindu monk, Yogi Adityanath, who many see as Modi’s successor.

Raul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition, has accused the BJP of encouraging intolerance. “Spreading the poison of discrimination in the minds of innocent children, turning this sacred space that is the school into a place to incite hatred (…) is the worst thing an educator can do for the country,” he wrote in X