An overloaded boat crosses the Brahmaputra in Guwahati on Tuesday. (Eastern Projections)

Tamluk, Aug. 18: Villagers held a kangaroo court inside a school, branded the headmaster, three teachers and a clerk thieves, and shut down the institution.

Two days before being “sentenced”, the terrified headmaster ran pillar to post yesterday to alert the East Midnapore district authorities to the teachers’ plight.

The local police had done little on headmaster Ashok Hatua’s complaint against the kangaroo court on Friday. He met district magistrate C.D. Lama and police chief P.K. Ghosh yesterday afternoon.

“Burglars broke into the school office on July 23 and took away Rs 1.10 lakh,” said Hatua, the head of Khamarchak High School, about 10km from district headquarters Tamluk.

The money had been allotted under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for the construction of two rooms.

After the police questioned some of the villagers on the theft, 60 people marched into the school on August 12 and drove out the students. “Then they put us on trial, ‘convicted’ us and said we’d be sentenced on August 19,” Hatua said.

The headmaster lodged a second police complaint — about the villagers’ trial — on August 14. He said the president and secretary of a village vigilante force led the villagers.

According to the law, a trial in a criminal case can only be held in a court.

East Midnapore police chief Ghosh said the local police had gone looking for the two accused, Trishanku Kar and Ashis Bera, on Sunday night but could not trace them.

Contacted over the phone, Bera told The Telegraph: “Since the theft occurred in the village, it is the villagers’ duty to crack it.”

A teacher who is not among those being hounded said the villagers had warned his colleagues against involving the police in the theft probe.

A Tamluk officer said a preliminary probe suggested local hooligans were behind the theft. “The school is located deep inside the village and it is not possible for an outsider to commit the theft and escape.”

He could not explain why the police could not make a single arrest since the first complaint was lodged on July 24.