New Delhi, Feb. 14: India’s apex child rights panel has indicted writer Arundhati Roy’s mother Mary and the school she runs in Kerala for publicly humiliating a boy and threatening him .

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has written to the Kerala chief minister, chief secretary and education secretary to “order the principal to stop humiliating” the boy.

Mary Roy is the principal of the Pallikoodam High School, Kottayam.

The commission has asked the state government to “provide protection” to the Class XII boy, Abhijith N.K., and expressed concern that the school may prevent him from appearing for his board practical examination, scheduled for February 18.

“We are extremely concerned about the events there. What is particularly shocking is that the boy was again publicly humiliated after he complained to us,” commission member Sandhya Bajaj said.

But school authorities said the boy was “far from innocent”.

“The boy has consistently defied any attempt to discipline him. We wanted to make him realise that the school and its discipline are above all students,” Mary Roy said from Kottayam.

She said the boy had been caught with a cellphone on the school premises. “We confiscated his phone but his parents filed a case against us, accusing the school of stealing his phone.”

Mary Roy said the school authorities had never physically punished the boy but conceded that Abhijith had been asked to apologise for “misbehaving with teachers”.

The school authorities said the Kottayam superintendent of police was the boy’s local guardian. “The boy used his connections to threaten us,” a senior school official said.

Bajaj, who conducted the inquiry, has suggested the boy be counselled.

A month ago, another Kerala district, Idukki, took a pledge to eliminate all forms of corporal punishment. Idukki has been recognised by the commission as India’s first corporal punishment-free district.