A teacher’s slap, student’s death revive India’s corporal punishment debate

New Delhi, India – Around noon on Thursday, Krishna Prasad received a telephone call from a friend informing him that his six-year-old son, Pranay Teja, had collapsed in school and had been taken to a public hospital.By the time Prasad, who cooks in homes for a living, reached King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam, a coastal city in southern India’s Andhra Pradesh state, Teja was already dead.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Outrage in India over death of six-year-old ‘slapped’ by his teacherlist 2 of 4India’s ‘Cockroach’ movement makes schools next battleground against Modilist 3 of 4Indian student dies after caning in classroomlist 4 of 4‘Rampant discrimination’ in India’s schoolsend of listTeja had been slapped by his kindergarten school teacher for allegedly failing to complete his homework. Grainy security camera footage from the classroom shows him standing in a queue in a distressed state, appearing to plead with the teacher.She pulls him closer and slaps him. Within seconds, he collapses onto her.Other teachers rushed to attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the child before taking him to the hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival.Teja’s famil...