Hyderabad, Aug. 4: At a time the government wants to punish schools where children are abused, the schools are punishing children by chaining them up — or giving them electric shocks.
Two students who fled their residential private school in Andhra Pradesh have accused the headmaster of tying electrical wires around pupils’ hands and feet and giving them shocks.
Vasant Kumar, 12, and Prasanna, 13, whose limbs bear the black scars of past punishments, said they ran away when they were threatened with a repeat because they had bunked classes.
They alleged that at least 20-25 students of the International Good Shepherd School near Tuni, a town 495km south-east of Hyderabad, had been similarly punished since June for “offences” such as low scores or protests against the quality of hostel food.
The school, which has no links with the Good Shepherd International School chain, charges a fee between Rs 5,000 and Rs 7,500 a month depending on the standard of hostel accommodation and food and any extra coaching provided.
Allegations of classroom abuse are on the rise in the state where expensive private schools, vying with one another to show good board results, are believed to be getting increasingly severe on their students. A headmaster in Mahboobnagar has been arrested for putting a student in chains to prevent him from bunking classes.
“Most of these schools charge Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000 a month and keep the students in the firing line to produce good results,” a state education official said.
The Centre is drafting a law that would force teachers who beat children — and their schools — to pay hefty compensation to the victims. The move is inspired by a survey that revealed 65 per cent of schoolchildren are beaten by their teachers.
The abuse at the Tuni school came out only when the two boys ran away two weeks ago and their parents contacted police. Officers said some of the other parents, too, had learnt about the punishments from their children’s letters but kept mum.
“They were afraid their children would be victimised during examinations,” a police source said. “Many of the school’s students bear the scars of electric shocks.”
“I was shocked when my son told me about it,” said Vasant’s father Prakash Rao, a government official at Tuni.
Class III student Sirisha, 7, confirmed Vasant’s allegation. She added that headmaster S. Krishna often “threatened to punish us by dropping wild insects inside our clothes”. Another student said he was made to wash a friend’s used undergarments before his mates because he had complained against the hostel laundry.
The police have registered a case of assault and criminal intimidation but said Krishna was absconding.
A local TV channel, however, has quoted the headmaster as saying, “We did it to help the students improve. The electric shocks were not given with any wrong intention.”
Good results are crucial to the state’s private schools which come out with newspaper advertisements and put up hoardings with pictures of toppers. Many poach good students from rival schools in the middle of the year, luring them with discounts and special coaching.
Many of these schools have entered the capital market and are locally known as “corporate schools”. There are some 1,300 corporate schools in rural Andhra Pradesh.
