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 La Martiniere principal held in suicide case



1st Arrest For Corporal Punishment


TIMES NEWS NETWORK



Kolkata: In the first such arrests in the country, police in Kolkata on Monday picked up the principal of the city’s famous 175-year-old La Martiniere for Boys School and three other teachers and booked them for handing out corporal punishment to a student, who later committed suicide. Sunirmal Chakravarthy and the three others were later freed on bail.
Corporal punishment was declared illegal by the Supreme Court in 2000 and the government has said beating kids in schools has no place in a teaching system focussed on reducing stress and enhancing analytical skills.
As the government has dithered on enacting a specific law, teachers have continued to lean on the cane. But few expected premier institutions like La Martiniere for Boys to condone the practice which came to light after Rouvanjit Rawla, a Class VIII student, committed suicide at his home on February 12, four days after he was caned.
The 13-year-old’s suicide shocked the city, setting off a clamour for action against the school which initially refused to even allow police officers dealing with the suicide to meet teachers.
On Monday, detectives rounded up principal Chakravarthy, head of the middle school L G Gunion and two other teachers, David Ryan and Partha Datta, before daybreak and produced them at the chief metropolitan magistrate’s court. The cops wanted to book them for abetting suicide but the court disallowed that charge for lack of evidence.
The teachers were booked under sections 323 and 324 of IPC that relate to “voluntarily causing hurt” by a dangerous weapon or other means, section 352 of IPC pertaining to use of criminal force, and section 23 of the Juvenile Justice Act, invoked against acts of cruelty by the custodian, in this case teachers.

City Principals React

Corporal punishment
dehumanizes the child but arresting teachers is not the answer to the problem.
AMEETA MULLA WATTAL
SPRINGDALES SCHOOL, PUSA ROAD
If the police have taken stern action, it can’t be wrong. A principal has to be answerable for teachers’ actions.
ABHA SEHGAL
SANSKRITI SCHOOL
I can’t comment if the action is adequate or not. But when the law says that corporal punishment is wrong, we completely agree with it. ADITI MISRA | DPS GURGAON