New Delhi: A day after it had reported on action against authorities of a government school in Uttar Pradesh where plates of Scheduled Caste children were being kept apart, Indian Express has reported that the husband of the Dalit village pradhan, who first raised the complaint, has been receiving threats from ‘upper’ caste villagers.The Daudapur village pradhan, Manju Devi, and her husband, Sahab Singh, who is the pradhan pratinidhi, or the representative of the village head, appear to have left their house in Mainpuri district amidst threats from Thakur villagers.The headmistress of the government primary school had been suspended after Singh complained to authorities – based on complaints from parents – that mid-day meal plates of students belonging to the Scheduled Castes were being kept separately and the same section of students were made to wash their plates themselves as school employees were unwilling to touch them.Caste discrimination in schools.In a primary school in UP’s Mainpuri, utensils of SC children were kept separately. They can’t keep utensils in the kitchen. But why? Does this hurt the caste pride of the principal? Yes!! #CrushTheCaste pic.twitter.com/r14m8c37el— Mission Ambedkar (@MissionAmbedkar) September 25, 2021Singh told Express that the Thakurs had threatened to shoot him and break his bones, used casteist slurs against him and said that they would make a ruckus in the village. Neither the District Magistrate, nor the Superintendent of Police were available to meet him, he said.Out of the 80 children at Daudapur Government Primary School, 60 are from the Scheduled Castes. However, only the utensils of the children who were from the General and Backward categories were being kept in the kitchen.Two cooks, who had refused to touch utensils belonging to the Scheduled Castes children when officials acting on the complaint went to visit the school, had been dismissed from service.A neighbour of Singh and Manju Devi told Express that “barely five to six Thakur children” go to the government school, and that when her daughter, a Dalit, went into the kitchen to ask for food, she was shouted at and asked not to enter the kitchen.‘Won’t send kids to school if a Dalit cooks’Singh’s complaint appears to have riled Thakur men in the village whom Express spoke to. One of them, Gajendra Singh, said that children “decide” where to keep the plates and that this was not a caste issue at all. However, what he told the newspaper does indicate an unwillingness towards caste equality.“Now, Sahab Singh is saying that someone from his community will cook at the school and that all students will have to eat that food. The village elders have said that if someone from the village head’s community (Dalit) cooks food, they won’t send their children to the school. Our simple demand is that things should go back to how they were and village head’s husband should face action,” Gajendra Singh told Indian Express.One of the two suspended cooks said that she had refused to wash the utensils, which was not her job, and that the food was made in one batch for all students, irrespective of caste.Mainpuri Basic Shiksha Adhikari Kamal Singh had told Indian Express that when the Block Development Officer and other officials visited the school, they found the cooks indeed refusing to touch the utensils of SC students and using casteist slurs.