Raipur: The public protested against a Catholic school in Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh state after two students drowned during a school picnic.
Alleging negligence from the school staff, the public demanded the arrest of the teachers who had accompanied the picnicking students. But due to intervention of the local government officials, they were pacified when Jesus, Mary, and Joseph nuns, running the Bharat Mata School at Tatibandh, Raipur, apologized for the lapse and gave a compensation of 1.6 million rupees each to the two deceased boys’ families.
On their demand, the police filed an FIR on the negligence of the school authorities. “After receiving the compensation, they were supposed to withdraw the case; but we are not sure whether they have withdrawn it or not,” Tatibandh parish priest Father John Y. David told Matters India on December 2.
Khushdeep Sandhu,15, and Aman Shukla, 14, of ninth grade, got drowned in the Mahanadi river when the 170 students went for the picnic, accompanied by 15 teachers on Nov 30 to Sirpur, 50 km away. A board on the spot warned it as a dangerous zone and forbade anyone bathing there. And the patrolling police too forbade the teachers and students from going there, just a few minutes before the tragedy occurred. It is alleged both the boys did not know swimming either. When these two boys were found missing around lunchtime, the police and the teachers searched and with the help of the local villagers fished them out. When they were brought to the nearby Tumgaon town health center, the doctors pronounced them brought dead.
A day earlier, some 190 girl students from the school had picnicked at the same place. Sirpur is a place of archeological importance with many Hindu and Buddhist temples on the bank of Mahanadi River. Saturdays and Sundays draw huge crowds. MattersIndia
