Greater Noida: The principal and a teacher of a well-known school chain’s Greater Noida campus, where a nursery student was allegedly raped by a swimming pool lifeguard, were booked on Wednesday on charges of criminal intimidation, cruelty and sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
This is the second time in 40 days that police in Noida have filed charges against a school principal. On July 17, the principal and two teachers of Ahlcon Public School in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar were arrested in the investigation into the death of a 16-year-old student, who committed suicide in March.
Her parents had accused the teachers of mentally and physically harassing her.
The reason for extending the probe to the principal and class teacher of the Greater Noida school is the messages sent to the class teacher by the mother of the three-year-old girl. She had informed the class teacher about her daughter’s health on the night of July 12, after she was allegedly raped. But it was the parents who went to the police, not the school, investigators said.
TOI had earlier reported that the parents were alarmed by their daughter’s sudden resistance to swimming and had informed her class teacher way back on May 15. Circle officer Amit Srivastava said, “We have sent a progress report to the state government on the case recently,” he said.
The principal and the child’s class teacher have been booked under Section 19 of the POCSO Act, Section 503 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC and the Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act.
The parents have records of WhatsApp conversations that show that the child’s mother had informed her teacher multiple times in May and July that she had been resisting swimming and they should try to talk to her. “Further, in a conversation with the child’s mother, the principal tried to influence her and even asked her to tell the Hindi media the incident was not what was being reported. That recorded conversation also implicates them,” a police officer said.
The police also recorded statements of at least 10 parents who had said the school did not fix security lapses despite the parents pointing them out to the authorities multiple times. At least one parent had informed police about harassment of their child and alleged bullying.
Parents of the nursery student told TOI they had met SSP Ajay Pal Sharma last Saturday and he had assured them of action against more persons. “The SSP assured us of more arrests soon. Our only hopes are on the police inquiry now. For at least four weeks, the case had been at a standstill,” the child’s father said.
Earlier, the parents had met the ADM demanding that the principal be arrested and her name be added in the FIR .
