Bhubaneswar, July 21: The sexual abuse of a six-year-old student by two gym instructors in her school in Bangalore has left parents worried here.

Though parents are worried about the safety of their children, school authorities said they had taken every possible measure to keep the schools safe and secure for students, including the girls, so that a Bangalore-like incident was not repeated here.

“We were shocked when we got to know about the incident. How can two staff members gang-rape a Class I student on the school premises during school hours? The incident has created fear among us,” said Anupama Rout, mother of a studying in Class V in an English medium school in the city.

The city houses around 25 English medium schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education and nearly six schools affiliated to the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education boards. Besides, there are over a hundred primary, upper primary and high schools in and around the city that are under the state board.

Parents of students, who are studying in these English medium schools, are more worried since the Bangalore incident took place in a public school.

“We pay a handsome amount as fees to the schools, and still we do not know how they are treating our children. If they terrify our wards, we will not be able to get a trace of it,” said another parent.

These parents and guardians are more worried about children studying in lower classes as they become easy targets of criminal elements and psychopaths.

But, the school authorities here said they had been taking all steps to keep the students safe with strict instructions to male teachers and non-teaching staff members about their behaviour toward girls and installing closed-circuit television cameras on the premises.

The DAV Pokhariput School authorities have been ahead of other schools in this regard. Not only have they installed CCTV cameras, but also kept strict vigilance on every aspects of security of girls.

School principal Sujata said they had conducted a sensitisation workshop for drivers and conductors on how to behave with children and their parents.

“We have told all male staff members not to touch girls of any class. We have women teachers, who would deal with any such situation that demands touching a girl student. Besides, we have lady teachers exclusively for lower classes,” said the principal.

She said the entire premises were under CCTV surveillance.

Similarly, Indira Bhattacharya, co-ordinator of DAV Public School Chandrasekharpur, said they conducted staff meeting every week and all the employees, including the group-D staff members, attended it. “We discuss such issues there and ask everybody not to touch any student whether boy or girl. Besides, we have women class teachers for all classes up to X. We also have women counsellors, who interact with students regularly,” said Bhattacharya.

The authorities also highlighted that they conducted programmes and workshops for students to sensitise them about such matters and train them on how to tackle these incidents both mentally and emotionally.

The shocking incident in Bangalore found its echo in the Assembly today with the Opposition demanding a statement from chief minister Naveen Patnaik and immediate arrest of the culprit. Alleging that the state government has slept over the issue, Congress member Nabakishore Das said leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra had already spoken to the Karnataka chief minister. Parliamentary affairs minister Bikram Keshari Arukh said the home secretary had taken up the matter with his Karnataka counterpart and the pressure had been built up on the government there to ensure stringent punishment to the culprits.