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New Delhi: A four-year-old girl was sexually assaulted twice by her classmate in a Delhi school with a “sharpened pencil” and his finger, and no teacher was around to prevent the attack that left the child “writhing in pain” and badly wounded, her mother has told media.
Shockingly, three days after the assault on Friday, the School told the parents it was safe for them to send their daughter again as the boy’s section had been changed.
The police have filed a case against the boy, who is also four, and are consulting experts as a child below seven cannot legally be held responsible for any crime. The girl’s mother says the school must be punished for extraordinary negligence, but so far, it does not face any case.
The mother has shared details of the assault “in the washroom and then in the classroom”. Her daughter, she says, came home in great pain and “somehow bore it”.
“(My daughter says)… the boy had just finished eating his food, he had not washed his hands and then touched her private parts. In the washroom, there was no Didi who could help her; in the classroom, her class teacher was not around, and here child says he sharpened his pencil and put it in too,” the mother writes in a most disturbing account.
The pain worsened on Saturday and the child was able to convey that it was in her private parts.
“At night, just before going off to sleep, she started crying profusely. She narrated an incident that left me aghast. She told me what another boy in her class had done to her. She cried a lot and went on the look for an ointment that I usually apply when they are hurt, Arnica. When I opened her bloomers and saw the injury, I was shocked. The signs of assault were visible as her private part was red and swollen, and when I applied ointment to it, she started crying all the more in pain,” she writes.
Sexual assault was confirmed by the child’s pediatrician and a hospital.
Security footage corroborates the girl’s version, her mother says. She was the last to come out of the classroom when all the children had long left; there was no teacher or attendant around.
The mother says while the child’s class teacher was “almost in tears” on hearing what happened, the school coordinator and principal did not react the way they should have.
“The teacher’s negligence is also very clearly visible. I paid a bomb as school fee, handed then my child hoping that she is safe in school, what is considered a second home, in the custody of her second mother, teacher, only to be let down.”
The police have filed a case of rape but are believed to be carefully debating the next step, since the minimum age of criminal responsibility – or when a person can be held responsible for a crime – is seven.
