At a hearing held on Wednesday by the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) on the matter of a school expelling four students over a diary with graphic sexual content, it was learned that several students had a hand in it.
The commission has now decided to get handwriting samples of all the class 9 students of the school, located in J.P. Nagar.
The school has been in the dock after it issued transfer certificates to four students after the diary was discovered. The complaint by the parents to the commission stated that two children had a hand in writing the text, while two others were responsible for hiding the book.
Since then, their parents and child rights activists made repeated requests to the school management to revoke the expulsion. But the school refused to budge, following which they approached the commission.
However, the commission authorities, who conducted a hearing on Wednesday found that more than four children were involved in the incident. “We have to probe this further and will collect samples of handwriting of all the students. We also learnt that this has been taking place for the past two months,” said commission chairperson Kripa Amar Alva, adding that a detailed probe would be conducted after CCTV footage from the school are examined.
Terming the response by the school as a “knee-jerk” reaction, Ms. Alva also pointed out that it was wrong on the part of the school to have issued transfer certificates to the four class 9 students. She pointed out that there was only one counsellor, who comes to school once a week, for 500 students.
Despite repeated attempts, the school principal refused to comment.