New Delhi: Allowing a 10th standard boy from Indore—who was expelled by his school over memes posted on a private Instagram account—to take his ICSE board examinations commencing next week, the Supreme Court Friday underscored that the child’s academic year couldn’t be wasted because of his actions which he’s picked up from society.
A bench of justices B. V. Nagarathana and Ujjayal Bhuyan noted that the boy is a “symptom of what is in the society because everybody is abusing everybody”.
“Instead of taking reformatory steps, the school simply disassociated the petitioner’s son from the school”, the court noted that the kid has been pursuing his studies privately at home with the help of tutors.
During the hearing, Justice Nagarathana also made oral observations, “You (school) have not reformed him, rather rusticated him” noting that the school should have taken the responsibility of reforming the child but instead did the opposite.
She recalled that on the last day of the hearing, 6 February, Justice Bhuyan had remarked that the memes probably reflected the conversation at the boy’s home. We can’t help it, the judges reiterated, if society is like that.
She asked the counsel for the school, “Have you seen anybody say good about anything?”
ThePrint had reported that the Supreme Court on 6 February had sought responses from the Madhya Pradesh government, the ICSE, and Indore-based private school Little Wonders Convent School.
The petitioner’s son, represented by advocate Nipun Saxena, has already been registered for the ICSE examination. Saxena said if the boy isn’t allowed to take the examinations next week, his academic year would get wasted, alleging disproportionate action by school authorities.
The school objected to letting the child take the exams, insisting he cannot be pardoned, and therefore the school was constrained to rusticate him. Also, the school’s counsel said, any order permitting the child to take the examination would demoralise school authorities.
During the course of the hearing, the counsel for the school also told the Bench that the petitioner—who is the child’s father and also a journalist—was using media reports to support his case.
The court, concerned over the child’s examination next week, directed the ICSE board to permit the child to take the examination and accordingly, issue a hall ticket/admit card to the child.
Importantly, noting the “nature of the controversy”, Justice Nagarathana granted liberty to the school authorities to let the child write the examination “in a separate room and not with other students”. It also directed the school to conduct the internal assessment examination of the child now and send the reports back to the ICSE authorities.
The case
The dispute began on 4 February 2025, when a Class IX student of Little Wonders Convent School was accused posted memes about teachers on Instagram.
The petitioner, Jitendra Singh Yadav, alleges that following the discovery of the Instagram account, a computer teacher physically slapped the child and conducted an unauthorised “raid” at the family’s residence.
According to his plea before the top court, the teacher illegally accessed a mobile phone registered in the name of the boy’s mother, hacked into the private Instagram account, and linked it to his own official credentials. He also alleged that the school coerced three students into giving “botched-up” written confessions under threat of immediate rustication, despite extraction logs indicating that the account user was a Class XI student—two grades higher than the petitioner’s son.
What were the Instagram posts about?
According to the MP High Court judgment in October 2025—which upheld the child’s expulsion from the Indore school—the child had “created memes of one of his own teacher on religious lines along with his photograph with a caption which is quite derogatory in nature and tends to offend his religious feelings and sentiments. (He) uses abusive language and communal references targeting teacher(s) of a particular faith.”
The MP High Court added: “…The tone and content of the post reflects a revengeful, vulgar and rebellious attitude. The chats which have taken place on the basis of the said post are highly abusive in nature. There is also a photograph of another teacher of the school along with a dog trying to depict their similarity which is wholly unacceptable… Fun has been made of a lady teacher on the basis of her physique… It is clear that there is not just one meme or post but there are a series of the same hence the acts of petitioner’s son cannot be said to be a stray incident….”
Right to Education
The Little Wonders Convent School, also argued before the top court: “Article 21-A does not create an enforceable right to education in a specific private institution”. However, the top Court, keeping that matter for hearing later, allowed the child to appear in the examinations commencing next week.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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