LOUDI (China) — The father of a kindergarten pupil in central China has received support online after he and a teacher were arrested following a violent altercation in a classroom over the teacher’s treatment of his daughter.

The man, surnamed Li, entered the classroom and slapped and kicked the unnamed teacher on Thursday (Nov 21), claiming that she had hit his five-year-old daughter, The Beijing News reported.

After dropping off his daughter at the kindergarten in the city of Loudi, in Hunan province, he had waited outside the classroom because he was concerned his daughter might be upset when he left, the report said.

He said he had burst in and assaulted the teacher after security camera footage of the classroom, being shown on a screen in the corridor, captured the teacher slapping his child. Two other teachers intervened and the police were called.

When footage of the incident was posted online, tens of thousands of people left comments, with most siding with the father.

“Bravo for the father! A man should protect his family,” wrote one person on news portal 163.com.

“If my kid received such treatment, I would do the same,” another person commented on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

The Chinese police said on Friday that the teacher, 28, had been fined 500 yuan (S$97.06) and put in detention for 12 days for hitting the child, while the father had received a 200 yuan fine and seven days’ detention, according to news portal Thepaper.cn. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST