The Supreme Court on Friday said the slapping of a Muslim child by his fellow students at the alleged instigation of the school principal in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district last year would not have occurred had the state government taken steps to prevent such incidents.

The court was dealing with a PIL filed by Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, seeking action against those responsible for the incident including registration of criminal cases.

“All this happened because the state did not do what was expected to do. The state should be very concerned about the manner in which the whole thing happened,” Justice Abhay S. Oka, who was heading the bench, told Uttar Pradesh’s additional advocate-general Garima Prashad.

The bench, which included Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, made the observation after Prashad informed the court that the parents of the victim child had shifted him to a school 28km away from their residence and the school where the incident had occurred.

She submitted that it was against the mandate of the RTE Act, which stipulates that a student from classes I to V has to reside within a 1km radius.

However, the bench said the incident would not have happened if the state government had taken sufficient steps. Prashad, however, maintained that the state government could not be blamed as the incident took place at a private school.

After taking on record the Uttar Pradesh government’s affidavit on the recommendations made by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) regarding the counselling of the victim and his fellow students, the bench asked counsel Shadan Farasat to file a response to the affidavit on behalf of Gandhi.

The bench also said it would go through the TISS’s recommendations and examine whether the court needed to pass any further orders on the same and listed the matter for further hearing on February 9.