The education department of the Uttar Pradesh government has served a notice to the primary school in Muzaffarnagar whose headmistress had made some students beat a Muslim boy in a classroom on Thursday.

Shubham Shukla, basic education officer of the district, told reporters on Sunday that the school didn’t fulfil the required operational criteria. “It had got approval to run in accordance with the norms of the Uttar Pradesh Board in 2019, but no such permission was sought next year,” Shukla said.

“The school also doesn’t fulfil the safety- and infrastructure-related specifications. We have ordered a thorough inquiry into the irregularities before taking action against its management. It will remain closed during the probe. We are shifting the students to other nearby schools,” Shukla added.

Tripta Tyagi, the owner and headmistress of the school, was seen in a video ordering children to slap a Muslim child and declaring that Muslim pupils should be beaten up before they were sent back home because they do not do their homework well.

Tyagi has claimed that the video, which surfaced on social media on Friday, was edited.

The police had registered a case against Tyagi on Saturday morning but the father of the targeted boy had withdrawn his complaint in the evening.

Naresh Tikait, Bharatiya Kisan Union president, had on Friday afternoon held a panchayat in the village where the school is located and declared that the father of the victim would withdraw the complaint because “we don’t want communal bitterness in the district”.

Later, Sanjeev Balyan, Union minister of state for fisheries, animal husbandry, and dairying, had met the headmistress and the child’s parents and blamed “the leaders of New Delhi and Hyderabad” for “trying to vitiate the atmosphere in Muzaffarnagar”.

“We will not let their plan succeed. The headmistress has tendered her apology and the parents of the child have pardoned her,” Balyan, who is one of the accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, had said on Saturday evening.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi had criticised Tyagi’s behaviour. While Rahul lives in New Delhi, Owasi is an MP from Hyderabad.