Patna, April 14: People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has termed the use of buildings of schools and colleges for housing security personnel as objectionable.

The observation has come in wake of an inquiry conducted by a four-member PUCL team into the March 5 incident in which students of a government school in Patna had a brawl with the personnel of Bihar Military Police (BMP).

The security personnel were lodged in the school.

While the school students accused the BMP jawans of eve-teasing, the security personnel lodged an FIR against the school’s principal Kamleshwar Prasad Singh accusing him of instigating the pupils.

Sources said when the PUCL team, comprising Vinay Kanth, Nageshwar, Nandkishore and Daisy Narain, met the principal, he was visibly upset.

Even before the March 5 incident he had requested the authorities to remove the security personnel from the school premises but no one paid heed to his request.

The team has observed that with the Right to Education Act in place, it is a gross violation of the letter and the spirit of the law to allow security forces to occupy a school for protracted periods of time.

The PUCL team has also raised doubts over the efficiency of the Bihar Police Building Construction Corporation. In its report, it has observed: “It is a sad commentary on the police department that even in the capital city of the state the police force should be occupying schools or stadiums causing unfortunate incidents now and then.”

The team has taken strong exception to the views of Patna senior superintendent of police Alok Kumar who said the PUCL team should not have aired its opinions without a proper inquiry into the incident.

The team has made this observation on the basis of a newspaper report in which the Alok had been quoted saying that the police unit stationed in the school had checked the occurrence of crime in that area and anti-social elements of the neighbourhood, along with the school authority, had stage managed the incident so that the police force could be removed.

Based on its interaction with parties involved in the incident, the PUCL team members have observed that the police version of the story — that principal instigated the students to attack the BMP personnel — was concocted.

The team is of the opinion that lodging of an FIR against the school principal by one of the BMP jawans, Ramlagan Paswan, was not justified and the case should be quashed.

The team holds the opinion that Patna incident, in which BMP personnel thrashed some school children, was a mockery of the legislations dealing with the rights of children.