PUNE: A sessions court rejected the bail plea of a reputable aided English medium school’s principal, facing charges of showing an adult video clip to a 14-year-old student twice in March and touching him inappropriately.
Additional sessions judge R V Adone held in an order on October 5 that the principal was in a dominant position and could tamper with the evidence as well as influence the victim and other witnesses.
The court said
the offence was of serious nature and the police were yet to record statements of some witnesses in the school and complete their investigation. As such, the applicant (principal) cannot be released on bail, it said.
Lawyer Sachin Thombare, representing the principal, had submitted that there was a delay of six months in the registration of the FIR against the applicant. The offence was not of serious nature considering that it was punishable up to three years, he submitted.
Thombare argued that the principal was a reputed person and would not abscond. Also, he was diabetic, and the court ought to release him on bail by putting certain stringent conditions, the lawyer submitted.
Additional public prosecutor Leena Pathak opposed the plea, arguing that the principal’s previous conduct (while he was posted at a school in
Solapur) and the action taken against him then ought to be taken into consideration.
Pathak submitted that a three-member inquiry committee of the school in the instant case had examined vital
CCTV footage and recorded statements of witnesses. One of the members later handed over this evidence to the police investigators, she said.
On September 29, the court had rejected an anticipatory bail application filed by the school’s woman counsellor, who is facing charges of not reporting the incident even after the victim had approached her and narrated his woes. The police are yet to arrest her.
The FIR mentions the principal and the counsellor as the two suspects. Charges have been invoked for offences under sections 506 (criminal intimidation) and 341 (wrongful confinement) of the IPC, and sections 8 (sexual assault), 12 (sexual harassment) and 21 (1), which refers to failure to report a case, of POCSO Act.