Nothing to worry?

New Delhi, Jan. 19: A teacher can’t beat students, the Supreme Court today said, observing on a practice banned by some but not all states.

“You have no business to assault anybody,” a bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan said, rejecting a headmaster’s plea to set aside his conviction for hitting a Dalit student who later committed suicide.

Hansukhbhai Gokaldas Shah, head of Birla High School at Dhandukha, Gujarat, had been convicted under Section 323 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which deals with causing hurt voluntarily.

Shah had slapped, kicked and abused Class X student Arvind Purshottambhai Hanubhai, dragged him to the principal and got him to sign a letter of apology. The boy had been fiddling around with Shah’s scooter.

The court rejected counsel Meenakshi Arora’s argument that Shah’s was an act of chastisement and not one of voluntarily causing hurt, and that he deserved leniency under Sections 88 and 89 of the IPC.

These sections say that a headmaster (or any other teacher) who, in good faith, administers moderate and reasonable punishment to a pupil to enforce discipline in school would not be guilty under Section 323 (the leniency is extended only if a student is more than 12 years old).

At every stage of trial and appeal, Shah had denied causing physical hurt to Arvind. But the chief justice said: “This (incident) was outside the classroom. It was in no way connected with teaching. You can’t go around beating people saying ‘corporal punishment’.”

Arvind had been sitting on Shah’s scooter around 4 in the afternoon and had kick-started its engine. But he could not shut it off. Shah abused the boy saying he had “polluted” his scooter and that the government was “wasting money” on him. Arvind’s father was summoned and warned by the school’s principal that the boy would be thrown out if any more complaints of “indiscipline” were made against him.

The humiliated student was later found dead on the railway tracks. His suicide note said he could not bear the idea of being thrown out of school.

The trial court held the headmaster guilty on several counts and sentenced him to life imprisonment under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

On appeal, the high court acquitted Shah of the SC and ST Act charges but upheld his conviction under Section 323. However, it reduced his sentence on this count — the trial court had awarded a year — to the period he had already been in jail: five days.

Shah then appealed against the conviction in the apex court on the ground that if it were not set aside, his career and pension would be jeopardised. The Supreme Court refused, saying: “You have anyway been let off with a light punishment.”

Physical punishment is banned in states and Union territories such as Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Goa, Chandigarh and Delhi. Although the National Policy of Education, 1986, talks of excluding it from the educational system, it has not been formally banned by the Centre. Kerala High Court has even spoken of retaining limited forms of corporal punishment to promote discipline in schools.