Sacked teacher-couple in love reinstated after social media outrage

Tariq Ahmad Bhat and Sumiya Bashir will be back as teachers at Muslim Educational Institute (MEI), Pampore, from where they had been sacked for being in love.

According to the Deputy Commissioner, Pulwama, Ghulam Muhammad Dar, the sacked teacher couple would be back to MEI, Pampore on Monday as he has resolved the issue on the instructions of the education minister Altaf Bukhari on Saturday.

He said that he had called the aggrieved couple and the school’s management to his office, and the school management has agreed to reinstate the services of both Bhat and Bashir who got married on 30 November. 

Chairman of MEI, Bashir Masoodi told this reporter that the matter stands resolved, when he was asked why the couple was sacked on the day of their marriage.

Earlier, there was an outpouring of support on social media for Tariq Ahmad Bhat and Sumiya Bashir, who were sacked on the day of their wedding by the private educational institution. Reports said that the management of MEI, Pampore decided to sack the couple as they found that their story of romance has spread like wildfire among the students of their institute.

Earlier, the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) had asked the Director, School Education, Kashmir and the principal of Muslim Educational Institute, Pampore to file a report before the commission by Monday, 18 December. The commission had asked the principal to be present in person.

Tariq Ahmad Bhat broke the story to a news agency narrating his ordeal on the wedding day when he was told by the principal on phone that he and his wife have been fired from the school.

As soon as the story was uploaded, it became viral and hundreds of boys and girls came to the support of the couple. Both bride and the groom hail from Arigram village of Tral, the hotbed of militancy.

The couple told the media that the school, by its decision of sacking them, has humiliated them and has tarnished their image as if they had committed some crime.

The school management has maintained that the couple had lied to them on the several occasions when they were summoned by them after receiving complaints that their romance was the talk of town.

The management said that the couple always denied their relationship.

The management of MEI, where over 2,000 students are enrolled with hundreds of staff, has said that their romantic relationship has adversely impacted the students, though they have two separate boys’ and girls’ wings in the school and the couple was working as teachers in these two separate wings.

Although dozens of such cases have happened before, this is for the first time that the sacking of a teacher couple for the crime of being in love before marriage has evoked so much of support from the government and the civil society.