Children of schoolbus attackers forced to stay away from school

KOLKATA: Children from families of BJP workers, arrested for targeting a school bus carrying kids on bandh day, have themselves not been able to go to school for the past two days and are now living in constant fear of their names being struck off their school registers.

Five BJP supporters — Krishna Sardar, Shyam Babu Roy, Sanjay Goldar, Gopal Mahato and Rana Saha — were arrested on Thursday for targeting a school bus, belonging to DPS Megacity, near B T College in the city’s northeastern suburbs on Wednesday. The BJP workers, according to police, were “trying to enforce the bandh”.

Now, in a turn of events that no one had foreseen, children from these families find themselves in a sticky situation for no fault of their own. No one has been able to attend school for a variety of reasons and all of them are now worried that they may not be able to return to school at all.

“My mother has been making the rounds of the court and the police station since my father’s arrest and I have been staying at home. Some of my friends have told me that my name may be struck off the school register as my father has been arrested in a criminal case,” the son of one of the five arrested BJP supporters, a student of Class IV in a local school, said.

‘How could my son target schoolchildren?’

The situation is the same at the home of a 19-year-old youth, who was the first to be arrested. “My mother and grandmother spent Thursday at court and spent most of Friday at the police station to see my uncle. So there is no one to take me to school,” the Class-II student told TOI, playing in the courtyard of a ghetto in Ganganagar.

All five arrested stay in the same neighbourhood, which is known as a “BJPsupporting neighbourhood”. Many young supporters of the party fled their home on Thursday, fearing arrest, as news of the police action spread.

My uncle is the head of the family,” a Class XII student, niece of one of the arrested, said on Friday. “We are now looking after the household while our parents are trying to get my uncle out of jail. I don’t know whether we will be able to resume school any time soon,” the elder of the two sisters said while cooking on the verandah of their home.

But all the families said the attack on aschool bus was “reprehensible and shameful”. “I support the BJP,” Krishna Sardar’s mom, Anima Sardar, said. “But the BJP bandh was to protest against the death of two students. How could my son and other BJP supporters target schoolkids? It is shameful and they should have never done so,” she said. Others in the neighbourhood, too, criticised the attack but said the attack was by “outsiders”.

“We are questioning four of the five, who are in police custody,” a senior Bidhannagar Commissionerate officer said.