Won’t send our girls to same school, say moms

Nagpur: After learning about the sexual abuse of their minor daughters, the world of these mothers came crashing down along with their dreams of educating them. Their wards were allegedly exploited in the Mata Anusaya Residential Hostel of Infant Jesus English Public High School in Rajura in Chandrapur.
The matter came to fore after their wards developed complications and were admitted to the hospital in serious conditions.

The mothers ran from pillar to post to lodge a police complaint and also to conduct medical examination for confirming the sexual assault. Even after confirmation of sexual abuse and penetration, nothing was moving forward, forcing them to knock the judiciary’s doors.

While recounting the horror experienced by their wards at the hostel, the aggrieved mothers were in tears while speaking to TOI. These tribal women, who are all daily wagers, were in the city to attend the proceedings of a petition filed by them in the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on Monday.

The petitioner mothers told TOI that their daughters are extremely frightened to return to the same school and categorically said that they would shift their wards to other schools. Initially, they were reluctant to talk, but later explained the harrowing time, they were facing, with tears in their eyes.

They asserted that the perpetrators of their children must not go unpunished and a mechanism should be developed to prevent recurrence of such horrific incidents that may ruin life of survivors.

It started on April 6, when one of the mothers received a message from the hostel at 11pm that her daughter had fallen unconscious in the hostel. When she went there, school authorities stopped her from taking her daughter to a doctor or even home. Even the plea of the minor’s grandmother who had accompanied the mother fell on deaf ears.

“As we were worried, we stayed back in the hostel premises for the night. On the next day, what I saw inside the hostel was very shocking. About seven to eight girls were lying unconscious on the floor, including my daughter. We immediately rushed her to the hospital,” one of the mothers said.

Another one got to know about the incident on the next day and she too rushed to the hostel to take back her daughter. However, the hostel authorities didn’t allow her and they themselves shifted the minor to a private hospital.

“Our girls were in drowsy conditions and couldn’t recognize any of us. They couldn’t speak as well when they were admitted to the private hospitals. They were unable to explain what exactly happened to them. The doctors told us that our girls are frightened and not in any condition to talk. We thought the girls may be stressed out due to studies but then realized that they were subjected to continuous sexual abuse,” the mothers say.

The women recalled that the first two years of their children in the hostel passed off smoothly and trouble started from this year only when their health started deteriorating. “They used to be in perfect health at home. But once back in the hostel, they would fall ill and always complain about stomach pain.”

One of them adds that her daughter’s illness started from the first week of March. Her daughter was suffering from typhoid, but after a blood test, it came to fore that she is also suffering from jaundice. “We had never imagined that the reason of their illness would be this. Whenever we used to ask them on why they don’t want to go back to the school, they used to cry a lot, but never revealed anything like this happening.”

Currently, the girls are admitted to the Government Medical College at Chandrapur. The women say they don’t have any other alternative than to send their girls to residential schools as they work as labourers all the time and are migrating from one place to other with their husbands.

(With inputs from Samidha Raut)