LUCKNOW: In an incident of corporal punishment, an instructor used a power hand drilling machine to wound the hand of a Class V student after allegedly he failed to answer the multiplication table of two at Basic Primary Model School in Prem Nagar area of Kanpur on Thursday.
The incident came to light on Friday when the student's parents protested in front of the school demanding action against the instructor.
Amid the protest, Basic Education Officer (BSA) accosted the parents and tried to appease them. Subsequently, he announced the termination of the instructor Anuj Pandey from service. Further, the BSA constituted a three-member committee to probe into the incident.
“A three-member committee has been formed to look into various aspects such as whether the child was hurt deliberately or accidentally and also the role of other teachers in hushing up the incident,” the BSA added.
Local sources said that the nine-year-old boy was passing through the school library when the instructor, hired from a private institution, was overseeing the repairing work with a power-driven hand-drilling machine in his hand.
On seeing the boy, the instructor stopped him and asked him to recite the table of two which the student failed to explain correctly.
Following this, the instructor, Anuj, ran the drilling machine through the hand of the student.
“Anuj Sir asked me to tell the table of two. As I failed to recite the table correctly, he got infuriated and ran the drilling machine on my left hand. One of the students Krishna standing beside me pulled the plug out to stop the machine but by then my hand had got injured,” the boy said narrating the incident.
The school authorities tried to play the incident down and sent the injured student with little first aid.
“The school administration neither informed the higher authorities about the incident nor did they take any action against the instructor Anuj. Moreover, the injured child was not given an anti-Tetanus injection immediately after the incident,” said one of the boy's relatives.
However, the school authorities informed the district education officer about the incident following protests by the child’s parents on Friday.