A teacher and the principal of a residential school in the Kolar district of Karnataka have been arrested by police, while four contractual staff were sacked following visuals from the campus showed Dalit students cleaning a safety tank, reported NDTV on 18 December.
Apart from this, another video surfaced where corporal punishment at the school, students were seen kneeling with heavy schoolbags on their backs at night.
As per details, the videos are from Morarji Desai residential school in Kolar, where there are 243 students, including 19 girls, from Classes 6 to 9.
It is alleged that at least four students from the school were made to climb down a septic tank and clean it with their hands as part of a punishment by the teacher.
Despite manual scavenging being banned in India about three decades back, the practice continues in various parts and as a result several deaths every year occur due to suffocation.
In a recent Karnataka case, children punished for cleaning a septic tank not only endangers their life, it also exposes them to trauma they will grow up with.
Among other things, videos of students kneeling with their bags on their backs and their hands raised surfaced, where a boy is seen gasping for breath as his friends try to help him drink water.
With these shocking videos going viral on social media, state Chief Minister Siddaramaiah gave the order to arrest principal Bharatamma and teacher Muniyappa. They both have been suspended from work on grounds of negligence and dereliction of duty.
The report added that in the state-run Karnataka Residential Educational Institutions Society, officials from the social welfare department personally found that teachers of the school beat students up.
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Published: 18 Dec 2023, 10:55 PM IST