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Tamil Nadu teacher gets
jail for cutting girl's hair
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THAMBI, Chennai
At a time when the
country is animatedly debating the Shantiniketan episode where a girl was
forced to drink her urine for wetting the bed, a court in Coimbatore in
western Tamil Nadu has awarded a jail sentence to a school teacher who had
imposed corporal punishment on a Class V student.
Judicial Magistrate
Hemanth Kumar, who convicted the teacher, observed that the punishment
awarded to the teacher would serve as a deterrent against the practice of
corporal punishment.
The accused Shobana,
who was working as Physical Education Teacher, at the privately run Bharathi
Matriculation School in Coimbatore, had allegedly cut the hair of a student
Harihara Sudha as she did not braid a double plait to school. The girl, who
was suffering from sinusitis, had attended classes with single- plaited hair
which had angered the teacher.
The incident happened
five years ago. Shobana was also accused of repeatedly slapping the girl in
front of her classmates and forcing her to kneel down for a long time in the
class and staff room.
On a complaint from her
mother Sumathi, the police had registered a First Information Report against
the teacher. However, for some reason, when the chargesheet was filed, the
accusation that the teacher had cut her hair was left out and instead she was
charged with hurting and wrongfully confining the student in classroom.
Strangely, during the
course of the trial, three of Sudha's classmates who were cited as
prosecution witnesses, turned hostile and claimed that the teacher had not
beaten the girl.
However, ignoring the
hostile deposition, the Magistrate went ahead and convicted the teacher
solely based on the evidence of Sudha. " The evidence of PW2 ( Sudha) is
cogent and inspires confidence. From the evidence, it is clearly shown that
the she was put to physical suffering," Kumar said in his order.
Holding her guilty on
two counts - voluntarily causing hurt ( Section 323 IPC) and causing cruelty
to a child ( Section 23 of Juvenile Justice Act), the Magistrate sentenced
Shobana to serve one- month prison term on each of the two charges. However,
he said the sentences would run concurrently. The Magistrate also imposed a
fine of Rs 1,000 on her.
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Wednesday 18 July 2012
Punishing students may land you in jail!
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