The Supreme Court today granted an interim protection from arrest to a Lucknow school principal and a teacher, accused of abetting the suicide of a class 12 student in December 2016 after allegedly giving him corporal punishment.
During the hearing, senior advocate Sanjay Hegde and lawyer Ajay Singh, appearing for principal Melvin Saldhana and physical training teacher James John, said that since the charge sheet has already been filed, their custodial interrogation was not required.
Therefore, they should be granted protection from arrest, the counsel contended.
Hegde submitted that the deceased student was not given corporal punishment in the school by any of the authorities and this was evident from the postmortem report.
The principal and the teacher have challenged the May 22 order of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court dismissing their plea for quashing the case and the charge sheet lodged against them for alleged abetment to suicide.
They said that the high court dismissed the plea without considering the statement of an eyewitness by which it was apparent that no prima-facie case of abetment to suicide was made out.
The class 12 student, Lalit Yadav, who was studying in Cathedral Senior Secondary School, Hazratganj in Lucknow, had on December 3, 2016 committed suicide at his home by shooting himself with his father's licenced pistol.
It was alleged that the student felt humiliated following corporal punishment being given to him by the principal and the PT teacher after he was caught roaming outside the school with his friend and had met with an accident with his motorcycle ramming into a rickshaw.
The plea alleged that the police has conducted a one-sided investigation in the case as the father of the deceased was a police official and had booked the school officials for abetting the suicide on presumptive grounds of causing humiliation and inflicting corporal punishment.
It claimed that the friend of Yadav had made a categorical statement before the investigating officer that the deceased was not given corporal punishment either by the principal or the PT teacher.
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