Police are investigating a teacher in India after a video of her encouraging students to slap a Muslim classmate sparked national outrage, reports say CNN.

A video of the incident, which took place in the Muzaffarnagar district of northern Uttar Pradesh, shows a 7-year-old boy standing in fear in front of his classmates as a teacher tells students to beat him.

The boy cries as his classmates take turns slapping him and the teacher tells the students to do it “correctly”. You can hear the man laughing and the boy wailing.

“Why don’t you hit him harder?” she asks in this recording as the kid stands at the front of the classroom and one by one his classmates come up to him to slap him.

After a wave of anger on social media, the first proceedings in the police investigation were opened.

The district magistrate of Muzaffarnagar announced that the education department would take action against the school.

India Today writes that the school has been closed and action will be taken against the school management.

The teacher awkwardly tried to defend herself in another video, where she says that because of her disability, she couldn’t go and hit the child herself and asked other children to do it.

Muzaffarnagar Police Commissioner Satyanarayan Prajapat said on Friday that the teacher told the students to beat the boy “because he did not remember the multiplication table”.

According to Prajapat, the teacher also referred to the boy’s religion.

“The teacher stated, ‘When mothers of Muslim students (one who practices Islam) do not pay attention to their children’s studies, their academic performance is ruined,'” said a police officer.

The police opened criminal proceedings against the teacher, the investigation is ongoing. The teacher was not officially charged.

The father of the beaten child told the media that he enrolls his son in this school.

“I will no longer send my child to this school, and they will return the money I paid,” he assures, News.ro reports.