Ranchi, April 3: The principal-cum-warden and her immediate predecessor of a state-run residential school in Godda were arrested today after a Class XI girl, who medically terminated her pregnancy on Friday, accused the duo of running a sex racket by sending her and other students to different men.

Though it is learnt that all other 350 schoolgirls of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, adolescents from Classes VIII to XII, have hotly denied this 17-year-old's allegations when questioned by a probe committee, the ugly aspersion casts a cloud on the security of rural girls in state-run residential schools meant to empower them.

Early this morning, Godda's Mahila Thana in Pathargama block arrested principal-cum-warden Kalyani Chaturvedi, only a month-old at the Kasturba school in Barkop, some 355km from Ranchi, and her predecessor and existing teacher Bijli Devi, under IPC Sections 313 (causing miscarriage without the woman's consent) and 316 (causing death of unborn child amounting to culpable homicide).

On Saturday, a day after her abortion, the girl told the police and media that Chaturvedi and Devi not only sent girls to men but also handed them contraceptive pills.

However, on Friday, when the girl suffered heavy bleeding during a physical training class, which then was revealed as the symptom of medically terminated pregnancy, the girl's father and school authorities claimed she was in an illicit relationship with an "uncle-like" figure who had given her abortion pills.

The girl, who was five or six months pregnant, was sent home with the aborted foetus along with her parents. "The girl confessed she popped abortion pills due to which she was bleeding profusely. We immediately informed her parents. Her father and relatives told us about the girl's illicit relationship and requested us to hush up the matter as her marriage was fixed. We allowed her to go home with her father," Chaturvedi had told The Telegraph on Friday.

She added the girl, who had taken admission in August 2015, was "irregular" in her attendance, but could not answer why the residential school had not taken any disciplinary step in this regard.

In one day, the girl's version changed completely.

Dr Ban Devi, deputy superintendent of Godda Sadar Hospital, part of a probe committee with Godda Sadar SDO Saurav Kumar Sinha, constituted by Vineet Kumar, the district superintendent of education, on deputy commissioner Ravindra Kumar's orders, confessed she was baffled.

The two-member probe panel questioned schoolgirls separately on Saturday. "All the girls strongly denied allegations made by the girl (that they were sent by school authorities to men for sex). Instead, the students pointed out that the girl herself was so irregular in school that she might not even know her classmates' names," said a source.

Though Dr Devi personally declined to comment on the girl's allegations of a sex racket in school, she pointed out lapses. "When I reached the school on Friday, the girl had left. I asked teachers and the warden why she was not sent to a health centre, to which they could give no answer," she said. "Even from a humanitarian standpoint, abortion merits a proper check-up, even if pills are used."

A source at Godda Sadar Hospital said the girl's medical report indicated abortion but could not establish rape or habitual sex.

Godda SP Sanjeev Kumar said they had instructed the district child welfare committee to talk to the girl. "We also instructed mahila thana constables to go to the school and take students into their confidence and talk to them again."

In the capital, Aradhana Patnaik, state secretary of school and literacy mission, said the girl's charges were "extremely serious".

"I have sought a thorough probe. I am amazed how the girl's pregnancy went undetected by the school warden and why she did not question the girl and her parents after the abortion. That way, she is definitely at fault," Patnaik stressed. "I will order CCTV cameras in each school with night vision facility."

Manoj Kumar, member of Jharkhand State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has sought action taken report from Godda DC on the case within three days.