● Rouvanjit Rawla, Class VIII student of La Martiniere for Boys, hanged himself at home on February 12, four days after being caned by the principal

● Babli Ghosh, Class V student of Andul Girls’ High School, died in May last year after a teacher hit her with a duster

● Iftesham Chowdhury, Class II student of Vidya Bharti School in Mominpur, went into a coma and died in November 2008 after a teacher slapped her hard

The government will have to send a set of guidelines to all schools in the state in an attempt to stop corporal punishment.

The high court division bench of Chief Justice J.N. Patel and Justice B. Bhattacharya on Friday ordered the school education department to circulate the guidelines — meant for teachers, parents and school authorities — “at the earliest” and inform the court about their effectiveness in two months.

Sukanta Chatterjee, the head of the paediatrics department and in-charge of the adolescent health clinic at Calcutta Medical College, has prepared the guidelines following a high court order asking the government to consult experts on how to eradicate corporal punishment.

“We submitted the expert’s suggestions to the court which turned them into guidelines and asked the school education department to circulate them to all schools in the state,” said a government lawyer.

The guidelines ask teachers to control anger and keep a close watch on students. Any instance of indiscipline has to be referred to the “board of teachers” so that a “collective decision” could be taken.

Parents have been asked to develop a positive attitude towards their children and spend more “quality time” with them. The schools have been asked to recruit teacher counsellors.

Corporal punishment — banned in the state since January 2009 — first came under the high court’s scanner in 2005 following a public interest litigation filed by advocate Tapas Bhanja.

The court later asked the government to inform all schools about the ban and take action against errant teachers.

“The government has failed to implement the ban... the rise in the number of complaints against teachers and school authorities is a proof of the government’s failure,” Bhanja had submitted in the court.

He had also informed the court about the tragic deaths of Babli Ghosh (a student of Andul Girls’ High School), Iftesham Chowdhury (Vidya Bharti School in Mominpur) and Rouvanjit Rawla (La Martiniere for Boys).

“Earlier, the teachers did not take the ban on corporal punishment seriously…. Now that the court has approved the guidelines, the authorities will have to sit up,” said the principal of a city school.