Delhi private school horror; student found dead in toilet

Crimes against children are continuing at a scale that every other day there is a news of it. But what is worse is that it is the child’s playmate/s that take part in such crimes, rather than stopping or reporting it.

Delhi police on Thursday said that a 14-year-old boy was allegedly beaten to death by his classmates and his body was found inside the premises of a private school in North-East Delhi where he was a student.

A student of Class 9 at the Jyoti Senior Secondary School, Tushar Kumar’s  body was found with no visible injuries in the washroom of the school located in Delhi’s Karawal Nagar on Thursday morning, said the police.

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While no injury or ligature marks were found on the victim’s body, the boy’s cousin claims that he was assaulted by fellow students from the same school.

A case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (Section 304 of the IPC) has been registered against unknown persons in this regard as police await the postmortem report to determine the cause of death. An official with the Delhi police told the media that the postmortem is scheduled for Friday and will be conducted by three doctors.

Fellow students discovered the boy’s body in the school toilet and raised an alarm at around 10:30 am, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (northeast) AK Singla.

“The staff of the school first rushed him to a private hospital and then to Guru Teg Bahadur hospital in Dilshad Garden where he was declared brought dead”, he added.

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DIARRHEA THE CAUSE OF DEATH

Meanwhile, school authorities have denied any such allegations and claim that the boy was suffering from diarrhea which ultimately led to his death.

A teacher from the school was quoted as saying, “There was no scuffle. The boy was not keeping well. He fell unconscious and was taken to the hospital as soon as the school came to know of it.”

However, the victim’s cousin claimed that there were injury marks on his neck and chest adding that the school authorities did not inform the boy’s parents of his unconscious state anytime before noon, more than an hour before fellow students discovered him lying motionless in the toilet.

The day also witnessed a protest by the boy’s family, who along with a local MLA staged a protest outside the school premises demanding an inquiry into the death of the boy.

What is more intriguing is that when police accessed the CCTV footage of the school, they found that a number of students entered the same toilet after the victim. While confirming the same, DCP Singla said that all concerned students are being questioned by the police and any further course of action will be decided once the postmortem report is released.

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THIS IS NOT THE FIRST CASE

In the past couple of months, several incidents such as this have been reported from schools in Delhi which have given way to serious concerns for the parents in the national capital who depend on the school authorities for the safety of their children.

One of the most sensational of the cases was the murder of seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur at Gurugram’s renowned Ryan Public School.

Pradyuman was found with his throat slit in the school’s washroom. The Gurgaon Police had said the crime was committed by a school bus conductor, which the CBI later refuted. The CBI claimed that a fellow student, a teenager studying in class XI had killed the boy in a bid to get the school closed so that a scheduled parent-teacher meeting and an examination could be deferred.