Police in India are searching for a teacher accused of beating a Dalit student to death over a spelling mistake, officers said amid violent protests triggered by the incident.<\/p>\n
Nikhil Dohre was struck with a rod and kicked until he fell unconscious by his high school teacher earlier this month after misspelling the word \u201csocial\u201d in an exam, according to a police complaint by his father.<\/p>\n
The 15-year-old died from his injuries on Monday at a hospital in northern Uttar Pradesh state, and the accused has fled the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is on the run, but we will arrest him soon,\u201d police officer Mahendra Pratap Singh told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n The Dalit community \u2013 formerly known as the \u201cuntouchables\u201d \u2013 sits at the lowest rung of India\u2019s caste system and has been subject to prejudice and discrimination for centuries.<\/p>\n Reporting from New Delhi, Al Jazeera\u2019s Pavni Mittal said violent protests broke out in Auraiya district, the location of the attack, demanding the teacher\u2019s arrest before the cremation of the boy\u2019s body.<\/p>\n \u201cThe family says the boy was beaten by his teacher a few weeks ago for making a spelling error. Now the family has called this a caste-based hate crime,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Hundreds of people took to the streets on Monday and torched a police vehicle. About a dozen protesters had been arrested, police officer Singh said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe used force to quell the mob and the situation soon came under control,\u201d Superintendent of Police Charu Nigam told reporters.<\/p>\n Mittal said there is growing anger against casteism and caste-based violence in India, where untouchability is \u201cbanned but remains rampant\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to government data, five-caste-based hate crimes take place every hour on average in the country,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Riya Singh, co-founder of the Dalit Women Fight organisation, told Al Jazeera the incident is \u201ca reflection of the entrenched caste hatred that upper or dominant caste people have against Dalits\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hatred is still so strong that it even extends to young children and ends up killing them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Singh said the country should accept that there is caste bias and that people are using crime and violence to justify their caste bias. \u201cIt is only with this acknowledgement that we can move ahead.\u201d she said.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/image-418-1024x609.png\")