BENGALURU: The age-old rivalry between St Joseph’s Boys’ High School (SJBHS) and Bishop Cotton Boys’ School (BCBS) reached a violent high on August 24 during the Cottonian Shield, a prestigious cricket tourney, which took place on the Cottons school grounds.
Students from Classes 9 and10 from both schools broke into an all-out punch-out against each other after Cottons won the match by 17 runs with Joseph’s team chasing a target of 154 runs in
20 overs.
The incident took place outside the school main gate, injuring several teachers in the process. The rift is set to escalate further with different versions of the incident emerging from the respective school authorities.
While the principal of SJBHS, Fr Clifford Sequeira, told City Express, “Three teachers and two students from our school were hurt in the scuffle,” the acting-principal of Cottons, Fr Prasanna Kumar Samuel, said only one Josephite was hurt.
An official from BCBS, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that some teachers may have been ‘pushed’, and that a few boys may have been hurt on both sides. He, however, says it was a “minor incident that has been blown out of proportion.”
Verbal abuses, poor crowd management cause of the fight
It all started at around 11am on the day. According to students who were among the spectators, the atmosphere was charged right from the beginning with supporters of both teams hurling verbal abuses at each other. A Class 12 student of Cottons who CE spoke with, was among the spectators. “Supporters hurled profanities at each other.
This happens every time there is a match such as this. No one knows how the fight started. There was no fight within the school’s premises," he said. Another Class 12 Cottonian, who watched the match adds, “After the match, the Jospehites were led out from the middle gate of the school while Cottonians were led out from the main school gate in-front of the traffic junction between Residency Road and St Marks Road. However, there was a major flaw in this arrangement since Jospehites had to pass the main gate to go to their school. A fight broke out in front of the main gate near the traffic signal.”
A Class 11 Josephite told CE, “Cottonians will say that no teacher was hurt in the process, but three of our teachers were, in fact, injured.” The three teachers are Isha Purkayastha (English teacher), Shantha Kumar R (Physics and Mathematics teacher) and Shivaprakash Honnasettar (PT teacher), say school authorities. Another Class 10 Jospeh’s student says, “This rivalry between the schools has been going on for decades, but we were shocked when we saw our teachers being pushed by Cottonians.”
‘Will sort it out between schools’
B Reddy, inspector, Cubbon Park Police Station, said no complaints have been filed by either party so far. Although another inspector met Fr Sequeira at his office, the latter says, “We do not wish to make any formal complaints. Instead, we will sort this out between schools.”
‘No inquiry as incident happened outside school’
Fr Samuel says, “As far as I know, only one student got hurt. Somebody from outside threw a stone and it hit a Josephite. We attended to him immediately and he was taken to Mallya Hospital. Two of our teachers also attended to him. It was a small scratch. The next day, I see on social media that the incident has been blown up.” Fr Samuel says Fr Sequeira got in touch with him over the phone and told him to institute an inquiry.
“I may not be able to institute an inquiry since the incident happened outside. We have staff posted outside the school’s premises. Even teachers who went outside said there was no incident,” he adds. He questions, with Cottons having won the match, “Why would the winning team hit people from the losing side? The case might be that they have hit our boys. We, however, do not know if this happened at all. It hasn’t been brought to my attention.”
‘One Joseph’s teacher slapped, two others hit’
Fr Sequeira termed the incident “unacceptable” and called for appropriate action against the guilty students. “Our students did not raise a hand against them and we congratulated them. Three of our teachers were hurt — one teacher was slapped in the face,” he says. Two students were injured and had to get stitches on the head, he adds.
He also says that he had spoken to Fr Samuel, but he was “indifferent” towards the issue. “All we want is for the school to acknowledge the incident or apologise to our students or at least give their own students a stern warning. I had also sent a letter on Monday asking them identify the culprits as there are security cameras around. I have been asked by my school’s management to await response from them,” he adds.