6-year-old collapses and dies after teacher slaps him at Visakhapatnam school

Dubai: A six-year-old boy collapsed in his classroom and died after being slapped by his teacher for not completing his homework at a private school in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam on Thursday, police said.

The incident, involving Pranay Teja, took place at a school in the city’s One Town area, Indian media reports said.

CCTV footage from the classroom shows the child holding his slate and standing in a queue in front of the teacher. He appears visibly distressed and can be seen crying as the teacher attends to him.

The boy appears to plead with the teacher not to beat him before she pulls him closer and slaps him on the cheek.

Within seconds, Pranay collapses onto the teacher.

Other school staff were alerted and rushed to help the child. They attempted to perform CPR before taking him to hospital, where doctors declared him dead on arrival.

Visakhapatnam Revenue Divisional Officer Sadhu Dileep Chakravarthy said the boy may have suffered a cardiac arrest after panicking, but authorities have ordered an inquiry to establish what happened.

“The teacher apparently alerted the other teachers, who rushed there and tried to do CPR on the student. Later, the school staff rushed him to a nearby hospital, but doctors declared him dead on arrival,” Chakravarthy told reporters.

He said it appeared that the child may have suffered a cardiac arrest due to panic.

However, doctors cautioned against drawing conclusions before the post-mortem examination.

Cause of death not yet established

The child's body was later shifted to King George Hospital (KGH) for an autopsy.

KGH Superintendent Dr I Vani confirmed that Pranay was already dead when he arrived at the hospital.

“I, too, saw the video, but we cannot immediately say whether he suffered cardiac arrest due to panic or any other reason,” she told Hindustan Times.

The boy’s parents subsequently gave their consent for the post-mortem examination, which doctors said would determine the exact cause of death.

The child's family said Pranay had appeared healthy when he left home on Thursday morning and had himself insisted on going to school.

His father said the boy had been playing normally the previous night and showed no signs of illness before leaving home.

Police have registered a case and begun an investigation, while revenue authorities have also ordered an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death.

The post-mortem findings will be crucial in determining what caused the six-year-old to collapse moments after he was slapped.