The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
HC dismisses teacher’s plea: ‘ Corporal punishment can’t be part of education’
IT’S CRUEL to subject a child to physical violence in the name of education, the Chhattisgarh High Court said earlier this week as it dismissed the petition of a teacher charged with abetting the suicide of her 12- year- old pupil.
A Bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal was hearing a petition by Elizabeth Jose, a teacher at a prominent city school in Ambikapur and a Catholic nun. In it, the teacher sought the quashing of a chargesheet against her in the case. The girl hanged herself on February 6, with a suicide note accusing her teacher of harassment.
Noting that the right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India includes protection from mental violence, the Bench said on Monday: “Subjecting the child to corporal punishment for reforming him cannot be part of education. As noted above, it causes incalculable harm to him, in his body and mind… It is not keeping with ( the) child’s dignity”.
The teacher allegedly found the girl and two classmates in the school toilet during the last period and seized their identity cards. Scared that she would be asked to bring her parents to school, she allegedly decided to kill herself.
The incident sparked a massive row, with the teacher being arrested soon after. She moved Chhattisgarh HC after a chargesheet was filed against her in April.
The teacher’s counsel argued before the court that the FIR registered against her under IPC section 305 ( abetment of suicide of child) was done without any preliminary inquiry and was based solely on the suicide note, without any clinching evidence. The teacher was a Christian nun with a good reputation and was being targeted due to her strict nature, the counsel argued.
The state counsel opposed this claiming that the teacher’s “act and conduct” had traumatised her students and that the victim’s distress was evident by her illness and eventual suicide the same day.
The Bench held that the veracity of the allegations notwithstanding, the teacher’s petition lacked merit.
“It is also evident that imposition of corporal punishment on the child is not in consonance with the Right to Life guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of India,” it said, adding that the right to life includes a “life protected against cruelty, physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, exploitation including sexual abuse”.