COIMBATORE: A day after the principal and three teachers of a school in Sulur were booked under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act based on a complaint from a class-XI
student, the boy and his entire family were booked by Sulur police on Monday night for trespassing into the school and preventing the principal from discharging his duty.
This was after the older boy showed up at school after being suspended for allegedly filming girl students on his mobile phone.
“The boy was suspended on Thursday for bringing a mobile phone to school and using it to filming girl students. Besides registering a case on the class-XI student for entering the school during the suspension, his father (a junior warrant officer in Indian Air Force), his mother and younger brother (a class-IX student of the same school) were also booked on charges of instigating him,” said the police.
According to them, the school management handed over the two students to the Sulur police, who held an inquiry with them on Monday. Then, they reportedly tried to reach the parents to ask them to take their children home.
As the parents refused to do so, the boys were produced before the Juvenile Justice Board and sent to Don Bosco Anbu Illam at Ukkadam, said the police.
A senior police official with the District Police said that the inquiry with the boys was conducted
in the presence of a Child Welfare Committee member and Anti Children Traffic Unit (ACTU) officials.
“The parents approached Childline and said that their children were missing from school. They knew their sons’ whereabouts but wanted to cause a diversion. Hence, we tried to reach the parents from 6 pm on Monday. However, they refused to come along and take the children home,” the official explained.
Call to revoke case against teachers, principal MP P R Natarajan, along with students and parents of the school in Sulur, urged Collector K Rajamani to revoke the sexual assault case filed against the school’s teachers and principal.
Submitting a petition to Rajamani on Tuesday, they claimed that the complaint by two boys against the teachers is false and comes with an ulterior motive.
Stating that the students and parents were feeling helpless and threatened by the errant behaviour of the boys and their parents, the petitioners sought the Collector’s intervention to restore normalcy in
the school.
They wanted the case dropped and the education of their wards to resume unhampered.
The petitioners claimed that the older boy has been causing a lot of disturbance for teachers and fellow students for over two months now.
“After several warnings and reprimands, he was given a chance to correct themselves. Then, he was found with a mobile phone. He continuously caused a disturbance in the class to provoke the teachers
and even tried to record them scolding him,” they alleged.
Speaking to reporters, Natarajan claimed that the boys and their parents had misrepresented the case to malign the name of the teachers and the institution. However, he suggested that a fair inquiry
should be conducted on the complaint from the students.
The case so far on Sunday, the Sulur Police booked the principal of the school and three women teachers under sections of the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences
(POCSO) Act for allegedly sexually abusing two boys (brothers) in the guise of frisking
them for mobile phones.
They have been accused of filming the exercise and threatening to put them online if the boys talked.
The boys — one a class-XI student and the other in class IX — and their parents claimed that this is not the first time they have faced abuse and harassment at the school. A similar complaint against the principal and a few teachers, filed in January this year, is awaiting a hearing.
The complaint from the students came a day after the school authorities filed a police complaint against the older of the two boys about filming girls in school without their permission.
He was reportedly caught with a mobile phone during a routine inspection on Thursday.
While a case has been registered against the boys, it does not include the relevant sections for the crimes mentioned by the school.