Teacher arrested for attempting to sexually harass a student in Kota: Police

Kota:

A teacher of a government high school in a village here was arrested for allegedly attempting to sexually assault a Class 12 girl, police said on Friday.

The accused was produced before a POCSO court on Friday, which ordered his remand in custody, it said.

The public school in Julmi village under the jurisdiction of Suket police station in Kota district, where the incident took place, had earlier been selected under the special category of ‘Prime Minister Shree School’.

Meanwhile, the state education minister Madan Dilawar has taken note of the incident and ordered the suspension of the teacher. He also ordered the suspension of the school principal for not taking timely action in the matter.

The accused Ved Prakash Bairwa (32) was arrested in the case on Thursday after the 17-year-old student filed a complaint against the lecturer earlier in the day, Raghuveer Singh, SHO of Suket police station, said on Friday.

The minor alleged that the accused tried to force her to have physical intercourse and forcibly held her hand several times, the SHO said, adding that the student reported the incident to her class teacher and the principal.

When the school did not address the girl's ordeal, she told her parents. They then came to the school on Thursday to discuss the matter, but were allegedly scolded by the principal and the accused teacher and asked to leave.

As news of the incident spread, hundreds of angry villagers came to the school to protest. When the staff noticed the mob, they locked themselves in a room.

The angry villagers caused a commotion on the school premises for about two and a half hours while the student reportedly waited outside with a garland of shoes.

After reporting the commotion, local police rushed to the school and on noticing the angry mob, called in additional forces from two other police stations. The accused lecturer was then brought to the police station. Bairwa was arrested on Friday after being booked under Section 74 (assault or use of criminal force on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Sections 11 and 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, SHO Singh said.

On Friday, the police produced the accused before a POCSO court, which ordered his remand in custody.

The Bikaner secondary school principal on Friday issued separate orders for immediate suspension of accused teacher Bairwa and school principal Diwan Singh Rawat, Kota district education officer Krishan Kumar Sharma said.

During the departmental investigation, the school principal was found guilty of negligence for not taking action despite reporting the incident, Sharma added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)