Sexual harassment of minor girls has been reported from an RTE-exempted government-aided Christian school in Tamil Nadu. 2 teachers have been booked under POCSO. The school management didn’t act against them and tried to bury the issue. The issue came to light only after some people informed the District Child Protection Unit about the harassment.
Recently Tamil media reported sexual harassment in a government-aided school in Elatthagiri village in Krishnagiri district. A Puthia Thalaimurai report said that History teacher Raja(59) and Lab Assistant Natesan(59) sexually harassed two 8th-grade girl students. Both students informed their parents of their ordeal. Parents went to the school to complain about them and sought the management to act on both teachers.
The school management told them it was only a small issue and might bring a bad reputation to the school if the issue got out. They asked parents not to “blow the issue out of proportion” and asked them to remain mute. Shocked parents went to the District Child Protection Unit(DCPU) and filed a complaint. Following this, DCPU officials visited the school and investigated the victims and other students.
They confirmed the accusations and filed a complaint with the All Women Police Station in Burgur. Raja and Natesan have been booked under POCSO. Police are on the lookout for them as they have absconded. Except for the Tamil daily Dinamalar, no other media has named the school. The concerned school is St.Antony’s Government-Aided Higher Secondary School, run by the Diocese of Dharmapuri. The diocese runs 27 schools, and half of them are probably subsidised by the government.
All these schools are exempted from following the anti-Hindu Right To Education Act rules as they are minority institutions. The RTE Act has stringent rules about safety in schools laying out the standards in detail. Many a time the “non-minority” are harassed for deviating even slightly from these standards some of which are impractical and frivolous. But minority institutions mainly run by Christians are exempted from following these rules. If the rules are for children’s safety shouldn’t it apply to all schools?
Even though minority institutions are exempted from the RTE Act, governments give them special monetary benefits as well. IDMI scheme is one such scheme in which minority institutions can avail Rs.50 lakh or 75% of the total estimate if they want to expand the infrastructure. If it were a Hindu run institution, Dravidianists and liberals would have descended on Hindus with contempt terming it as an RSS, BJP, Hindutva ideological crime.
When PSBB, a school run by Brahmins in Chennai, was in news when one of their teachers sexually harassed students, and when the same happened in Chinmaya Vidyalaya in Coimbatore, media and Dravidianists dragged them through mud just for teaching Sanatani values. Yet despite claiming to be rationalists none of them even recognise the disparity in the field of education and rather seem to think that if not for the missionaries Bharatiyas would have been illiterate. But the cultural degradation Christian schools bring about is for everyone to see.
