Thursday, Jul 12, 2012
Kolkata: The ’soft’ handling of a hostel warden who allegedly asked a ten-year-old girl to drink her own urine as a punishment for bed-wetting has sparked nationwide outrage.
Apparently, the school’s warden Uma Poddar of Visva-Bharati’s Patha Bhavan school sprinkled salt in the urine and asked the girl to lick it.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh who is also the Chancellor of the University has sought a report from the Viswa Bharti authorities on the issue. Also West Bengal governor who is the convener of the university has intervened and has asked the authorities to take steps to ensure Poddar is not let off lightly.
“The warden has been suspended indefinitely, and section 23 of the Juvenile Justice Act has been slapped against her along with other sections of the Indian Penal Code. We are taking adequate steps to ensure that such acts are not repeated. We have also asked the student to join school and from now she can continue as a day scholar and need not stay at the hostel as per the wishes of her parents,” Viswa Bharti spokesperson Amrit Sen told Gulf News.
However, most feel that the action initiated by the university is too little too late.
“Firstly the university tried to protect Poddar by saying she was out of station and then later harassed the girl’s parents by lodging a police complaint against them, saying that there was a ploy to defame the institution, where they should have stood by the parents in this horrific crisis,” said Sawagata Sen, a parent of girls studying at Patha Bhavan.
‘Systemic rot’
Meanwhile, the girl says she does not want to continue in the same school.
“I won’t go back to the hostel. I want to study in another school. They may again ask me to do the same thing,” said the Class 5 student of Patha Bhavan school.
She said her parents had agreed to her request.
“It is so shameful for me to lick my own urine. Being a 10-year-old, when I do not believe in such superstitions, how the warden can have faith in such things?” she said.
The authorities, after receiving flak from all quarters on the issue, have requested the girl’s parents to make her a day scholar.
“We got a call from the university today asking us to take back our daughter and continue her studies as a day scholar,” said Poonam Mistri, the girl’s mother.
The girl’s parents are now in a state of shock and don’t know how to help their daughter recover from the trauma.
“We have been summoned by the Additional Magistrate of Bolpur, where probably he will record our statement as sought by various agencies including the Human Rights Commission,” they said.
The state education minister Bartya Basu has reportedly written a letter to the union Human Resource Development Ministry seeking unprecedented punishment for those accused. Speaking to Gulf News, the minister said, “a thorough probe must be done as to not only Poddar’s actions but to find out the systemic rot that has taken place. Otherwise how can staff behave the way she had done.”
“This is probably the best gift the state has given to Tagore when his 150th birth anniversary was being celebrated with much fanfare. Forget about protecting his materialistic things like the Nobel Prize that was stolen from the Viswa Bharti campus, it seems his ideals are completely lost and now it has become an institution for personal profiteering,” said Susmit Bose an ex-student who has now appealed to the old students’ association to take corrective measures.
By Archisman Dinda ?Correspondent
Gulf News 2012. All rights reserved.
