COIMBATORE: Coimbatore city police launched a probe against the principal and management members of a private school located near Athipalayam junction whose two staff have been arrested in a POCSO Act case recently.
According to city police commissioner V Balakrishnan, the victims are studying in the school and they had already informed about the alleged harassment to the management. But they failed to prevent it, he said.
AWPS (East) arrested two staffs A Murali (34), a physical education teacher, and S Vijayakumar (34), an administrative officer of the school on Saturday under the POCSO Act based on complaints by four girl students. The two were accused of misbehaving with the girl students.
During the course of an inquiry, the victims informed police that they had told the management about the harassment by the staff, but they did not take action. The police commissioner further said that the school is one of the institutions that did not permit police to conduct programmes to sensitise students to crimes against them.
“We have been conducting awareness programmes in several schools to make students aware of crimes against them. However, some private institutions refuse whenever police approach them for the programme. The private school involved in the case is one such institution. Also, they failed to report the harassment to the police at the earliest, despite the students' complaints.
Hence we are requesting all the private school managements to allow police to conduct such programmes which help students to be aware of such crimes. If any school management fails to inform such incidents, it will be considered as a crime and they will also face legal action,” said Balakrishnan.