Raiganj, May 26: A group of students today punched and kicked their headmaster in the school corridor after being denied promotion to Class XII.

The students have said they will not allow the headmaster to work in the school till he promotes them.

The headmaster of Bindol High School, Bishnu Dayal Agarwala, filed an FIR with the Raiganj police station later in the evening.

Narayan Chandra Roy, the secretary of the school managing committee, and Dhanilal Barman and Ajoy Saha — two other members — had incited the boys to beat him up, Agarwala alleged. All three have been named in the FIR. The headmaster said he could identify the students although he has not mentioned their names in the complaint.

The incident occurred around 2pm. By 3pm, the agitating students had locked the gates of the school, located 30km from here. Most of the students had left early — a common practice in schools on the first day after summer vacation — and the few who were there, were waiting outside the campus. Police, too, had arrived.

The headmaster’s room bore signs of ransack. Files and books were strewn around on the floor and furniture hurled aside. The telephone lines, too, had been snapped.

This year, 114 boys had appeared in the Class XI annual examination. “It so happened that 45 of them did not get the required pass marks. The results were scrutinised, passed by the academic council of teachers of the school and the results were published on May 5, the day the school gave over for summer,” Agarwala said.

When the school reopened today, the boys, egged on by some of the teachers, entered the headmaster’s room and asked him to “consider” their cases, Agarwala said.

“I said that my hands were tied as the marks had been sent to the higher secondary council. What followed next was unthinkable,” the headmaster said, breaking down.

The boys swept all documents and stationery off Agarwala’s table and disconnected the telephone. They then left the office, locking the headmaster in.

“A few moments later, the door was opened by Roy. He came in with Dhanilal Barman and Ajoy Saha, two other members of the managing committee. They dragged me outside to the corridor where the students were waiting. I was pushed to the ground and suddenly kicks and blows started raining down on me. The others teachers were mute spectators,” Agarwala said, nursing sore arms and a swollen knee.

Roy has denied the allegations. He said the headmaster always kept the managing committee in the dark about the decisions taken or the financial transactions made. “It was he who abused us,” Roy said.

Arup Ghosh, one of the teachers said, there had been some “mild altercation” between the headmaster and the students.

“It was a minor incident, Agarwala is trying to blame us to keep his image intact,” Ghosh said.

Palash Barman, one of the students who have failed to get promotion to Class XII, said the day the results were declared, the headmaster had assured them that when the school reopened after the summer vacation, he would reconsider their cases.

“We had gone to remind him of the promise. Instead he abused us. We locked him up and we will not allow him to work here till he promotes us,” Palash said.