[ad_1]
The Karnataka High Court has rejected a petition filed by the officials of a school in the Kodagu district challenging the rejection of a closure report by the police by a magistrate in connection with the alleged suicide of a 15-year-old student.
The order was passed on June 26 by a single-judge bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna.
The student had been suspended for 21 days after he had brought alcohol to the school in a water bottle. His parents had alleged that despite being instigated to do so by a senior student he was the only one to be punished. They alleged he killed himself after not being sent the link for the online examination, which was assured to him as he was suspended.
The bench took a dim view of a negative report by the student counsellor about the child being found dated three days after his death, and said, “There cannot be any better generation of uncouth attitude on the part of the educational institution”.
Noting that the boy was communicating with the school up to 15 minutes before his death, the bench said there was proximity to the suicide. The bench further concluded there were no circumstances that would warrant the quashing of the case at this stage, and it would “put a premium” on the actions of the school without allowing them to face trial.
As a closing observation, the bench noted, “A child may be a troublemaker, mischievous or otherwise. Punitive disciplinary actions like suspensions and expulsions would sometimes in no way help the child get over the aforesaid traits. It would only result in fading away all learning habits of the child and great hardship to those families”.
“Therefore, the schools which are inculcating harsh discipline should think of a paradigm shift so that the lives of young souls, who do not have the capacity to think of the consequences of any action sometimes may lead to devastating steps like the one found in the case at hand”.
“Such cases would form illustrations of negative self-evaluation and the children feeling bad about themselves. The educational institutions, therefore, have to recognise this malady of over/harsh discipline, remedy the wrong in a different manner, so that the lives of young souls would be saved,” said the judge.
“It is not the case of just one student…. The institutions should also recognise that the age-old principles have now changed, I mean “spare the rod and spoil the child” has metamorphosed into “spare the rod and teach the child”.
[ad_2]
