Mom of SC boy in Delhi beaten up by teacher seeks independent probe

NEW DELHI:  Nearly a month after a 12-year-old boy was forced to broom his school campus after his hand was broken in an assault by a teacher, his mother has come forward and demanded an independent inquiry into the incident.

In the incident at Gurukul Mahavidyalaya in Haryana’s Jhajjar on April 29, class IX student Shubham was locked in a room and assaulted by his teacher. He was also hurled with casteist abuses. The mother, Rina Kumari, the child was bet up for allegedly stealing another student’s wristwatch. “When I asked them to show proof and bring the boy whose wristwatch my child stole the teachers had nothing to say and kept on giving more excuses,” she said.

The mother along with support from the Diversified Intervention of Youth Awareness (DIYA), Ambedkar Missionaries Vidyarthi Association (AMVA) and Haq Centre for Child Rights had held a press conference in Delhi and demanded an independent inquiry on the conduct of the school by a retired magistrate.

While the Jhajjar police have registered a case against the person who assaulted the child, the teacher is yet to be arrested, with no action taken so far. Shubham with plastered arms said many children have been roughed up before too at his school.

According to DIYA, the family was not given a copy of the FIR until civil society organisations intervened. “The family has neither received the copy of the medical report nor has they received any compensation or grant for treatment of the child. Head of the institution Vijay Pal, Police and CWC are non-cooperative,” said a representative of the Haq Centre for Child Rights. Meanwhile, in the same school in 2015, another boy was molested by another teacher for over a year.