Bullying or game gone wrong? School student loses partial hearing after being slapped by classmate

A slapping bet amongst school students may sound like an innocuous children’s game. But for a student of a Noida school, it resulted in partial loss of hearing.

A video which is being shared widely on Facebook shows four boys in a school in Noida. While one of them stands in the centre (the one who will be slapped), one is recording the ‘slap bet’ on the phone. All of them were reportedly class 10 students.

The incident took place at the school on September 4. The student recording the video can be heard asking the boy who would be slapping to count to three. “The Snapchat story might stop in the middle,” the student recording the video adds.

The boy can be seen cringing a little before he is actually slapped. After he is hit, he can be seen holding his face, while the other boys laugh. The one recording the video asks him if he is okay, and cuts off the video.

According to Mail Today, the impact of the slap caused the boy’s eardrum to burst, affecting his hearing. Doctors said that he lost 25% of his hearing after the incident.

The victim’s parents approached the school after he narrated the incident to them. The parents wrote an email to the school principal, saying that it could be seen in the video that their “son is under great deal of stress and fear and is helpless for so many students have surrounded him (sic)”.

However, the school’s director issued a statement denying that this was a matter of bullying. “This is a rather unfortunate incident. However, this is not a bullying incident. It is the outcome of a consensual peer ‘slap bet’ episode that a few Pathways School Noida students had among themselves. [name of the school] has been swift in responding to the situation and has taken appropriate action with the involvement of parents of the students,” she said.

The students (apart from the victim) have been suspended after being made to apologise to the parents of the affected child. The one who slapped has been suspended for a month, and the others for two weeks, the school director said. “They have all written letters of apology to the boy and his parents,” she added.

The victim’s father told HT that his son was in a lot of pain after the incident and insisted that he was bullied by the other boys. Saying that he had not filed a police complaint, the father said that he would trust the school to take action.