After a lot of pupils complained, a headmistress and a teacher at an upper secondary school in Kerala’s Palakkad district have been put on leave while an investigation is going on. This happened two days after a Class 9 lad from Kannadi Higher Secondary School sadly took his own life.
On Tuesday night, the student was found dead at home. Friends say he had intimated that he was going to kill himself. The suspension that followed on Thursday was caused by a lot of students protesting and demanding that the school administration be held accountable.
Claims of mental abuse and physical assault
Students who were protesting made significant accusations against the class instructor, Asha, saying that what she did caused the youngster a lot of mental stress. The fight was said to have started because the boy had posted inappropriate remarks to someone else on Instagram, which the school had learned about.
A classmate of the victim informed local news that the teacher’s threats were very serious and scared the child. A classmate said, “The teacher threatened him, saying that the cyber cell would file a case against him and that he would stay in jail for a year and a half.”
Another student who saw it said that the punishment was also physical. He said that both Asha and the headmistress hit the youngster in the staff room and pulled his ears in front of other people. The student said, “His hands were shaking at the time,” to explain how upset the victim was during the event.
School Officials Stand Up for What They Did
But school administrators have strenuously denied that what they did led to the student’s death, saying that the claims of the teacher’s behavior are being twisted.
Headmistress Lissy justified the school’s actions, saying that the boy’s family was the first to bring up the problem by showing the school the “lewd” Instagram posts.
“The teacher just told him that doing things like that on Instagram will get him in trouble. Lissy said, “She was just doing her job by warning him.” She ended by saying, “Later we found out that he died that day.” What we did had nothing to do with his death.
There is an investigation going on.
The suspensions were put in place so that a fair inquiry could be done into what happened.
Asif, the District Educational Officer (DEO), said that testimony from the school’s kids would be carefully gathered before any final action is taken against the teacher and headmistress by the department. The Kuzhalmannam police have also filed a complaint of unnatural death, and a full investigation is underway to find out all the reasons that may have led to the suicide.
This tragic event shows how important it is for schools to have explicit rules on how to deal with student social media problems, especially when they entail threats of legal action and major mental health difficulties.