(Law breaker vs tattle taler) who should be punished more

It all started in one ordinary school day. School had begun and we were about halfway through the day when a kid raised his hand and told the teacher that a girl was looking at her smartphone at class and he also told the teacher that she had hit another student and did a very rude gesture at another student. When the class heard this, almost everyone seemed shocked. Since we have a very strict teacher, our teacher was instantly angry. At first, I thought that the girl had done a very bad thing.

For a few minutes of the teacher yelling, nothing was said until a kid sitting behind me raised his hand and told the teacher that the kid who apparently told on the girl was lying. And at that point, kids who had also seen the incident started telling the same thing too. What had actually happened was that the girl had not actually hit another classmate; she had lightly pushed another classmate because that classmate was looking at her notebook, and the girl apparently hadn’t done the rude gesture and the kid who told on her was just lying. So, I guess that the boy who told on the girl wasn’t exactly lying but was making the incident seem a lot larger that it was.

So that “little” incident got me thinking. In this case, who is the one that should be punished the most? The girl who looked at her smartphone in class while the teacher wasn’t looking for about 10 times or the boy who falsely made the incident seem larger and delayed class time? The actual verdict made by the teacher was that the girl got heavily punished and I think the boy had to sweep the classroom. I think that although the boy might have done the right thing to inform the teacher that the girl was looking at her smartphone, he delayed a lot of class time by adding on to the original thing. So, what do you think? Feel free to leave your answer in the comments.