In a repeat incident from five months ago, upper caste students in a government school in Uttarakhand’s Champawat district refused to eat mid-day meals made by a Dalit cook, The Indian Express reported.
The cook, Sunita Devi, was sacked on December 23 after 43 upper caste students of the school boycotted mid-day meals as a protest against her appointment. District authorities had claimed that norms had been flouted in Devi’s appointment.
In retaliation, 23 Dalit students of the school had refused to eat mid-day meals prepared by an upper caste cook who had replaced Devi.
Devi was reappointed later and started cooking midday meals in the school in March.
On Friday, the school’s Principal Prem Singh said that seven to eight students refused to eat meals cooked by Devi.
“Today, the district magistrate and a few police officials had a meeting with the students and their parents and tried to convince them to stop boycotting the meal,” Singh told The Indian Express. “The officials themselves had a meal at the school. However, these seven to eight students still refused to eat, claiming they do not eat rice.”
The principal also held a meeting with the parents of the students and warned that the children could be expelled from the school.
In December, Devi had registered a complaint with the Uttarakhand Police against 30 persons after the school fired her. The police had charged the accused persons under sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and Section 506 (intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
This article first appeared on scroll.in