Minor’s suicide: Principal, teacher held

JAIPUR: A day after a 13-year-old student of Class VIII from Kendriya Vidyalaya-2 committed suicide after he was wrongfully accused by the school administration of stealing a bicycle, the police on Saturday night arrested the school principal and a teacher.
ACP (Jhotwara) Aash Mohammad told TOI that Jhotwara police station arrested principal Uma Shankar Vijay and teacher Mahendra Prasad Verma under Section 305 (Abetment of suicide of child) for the suicide of their student Lakshya Jatoliya.“The teachers compelled Lakshya to write an application falsely admitting he was a thief. He had even pleaded with them multiple times that he was innocent,” Mohammad said, adding that Lakshya in his suicide letter wrote that he is not a thief and was humiliated by the staff.
Lakshya’s body was found hanging in his house on Friday evening. He left a suicide note in which he wrote that he kept pleading to his teachers that he had not stolen any bicycle, but the principal and other teachers kept harassing him.
The victim’s father Kajod told TOI that the school did not take into consideration the due process and subjected the minor boy to humiliation, forcing him to take the extreme step. “At 10am on Friday, Kajod was summoned to the principal’s room. He went there and found Lakshya already standing in the corner. The school staff misbehaved with his son in front of his father and rusticated Lakshya without hearing him out. The young boy could not bear the trauma,” said Suresh, Kajod’s brother.
A crestfallen and deeply dejected Lakshya returned home at 4pm after facing over a three-hour-long barrage of abuses and threats. After being branded as thief, he went upstairs and hanged himself.
School principal Uma Shankar Vijay and teacher Mahendra Prasad Verma were summoned to the Jhotwara police station for interrogation and were subsequently arrested. The deceased’s relatives told TOI that Kajod took his son to their home after the incident but Lakshya was inconsolable. “After coming home, Lakshya refused to speak to anyone. His last words to the family members were that he was innocent and was being wrongfully branded as a thief. Later, we found him dead,” Suresh said.