- Sunday, March 09, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
The government of the southern Indian state of Telangana has ordered that a private school in state capital Hyderabad, where a four-year-old was allegedly raped for two months, to shut the institute down and students of the school be accommodated elsewhere, NDTV reported.
Sabitha Indra Reddy, the education minister of the state who gave the order, also gave instructions that a committee led by the state’s education secretary should submit a report to the state government on what measures could be taken to prevent such incidents in future.
According to the NDTV report, the committee will feature the director of school education; secretary in the women and child welfare department; and a senior official dealing with securing children against sexual crimes. The report will be submitted within a week.
The school located in Hyderabad’s posh Banjara Hills area was closed after the horrific incident came out.
The driver of the school principal, accused of raping and sexually assaulting the child, was arrested this week. The principal, who reportedly laughed off the complaint about the incident and ignored it, was also arrested after patents protested.
The child’s parents noticed changes in her behaviour and when her mother enquired about it, she understood that something was wrong. The child repeatedly pointed to the accused driver who could enter the school.
Angry parents then beat up the driver and staged a protest in front of the local police station. A first information report was registered after that. After a probe, it was found that the school’s CCTV cameras in the school were not functioning and that the accused driver had also pretended as a teacher for the pre-primary section.
However, the minister’s strong order on shutting down the school also caused concerns for parents of other children studying there, the NDTV report said, adding that even some government officials were not convinced since there are 700 students who study in that school and accommodating them in other institutes in the middle of the year would be challenging.
