Housewife raped in Malda Subhro Maitra, TNN | Jul 14, 2012, 02.37AM IST

MALDA: A married man has raped a housewifeof his village placing a sickle on her throat at Syedpur village under Malda police station. Police have registered a case against Dayal Sarkar, the accused, but are yet to arrest him. 

On July 10, the 28-year-old victim was alone in her house as her husband went to a nearby tea-stall and her three children were at a neighbour's house. Taking advantage of the situation, Sarkar led the victim to a bush beside a nearby pond and raped her. Unable to bear the pain, the housewife cried out loud. Two youths heard the cry and rushed to rescue her. They even caught hold of the accused, but he somehow managed to escape. Police Super Jayanta Pal said, "We have started a case of rapefollowing the complaint." 


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Girls forced to strip and clean classroom floor TNN | Jul 14, 2012, 02.07AM IST

HALDIA: Teachers in our state do not seem to learn their lesson easily. Despite teachers and schools being in the eye of the storm several times recently over mistreating students, yet another horror story was reported on Friday, this time from a girls' school in Haldia.

Three Class VIII students of Doro Krishnanagar Banithirtha Vidyalaya in Sutahata, off Haldia, were allegedly beaten up by their headmistress and made to strip in front of their classmates on Thursday so that they could mop up with their uniforms the water they had allegedly dropped on their classroom floor.

While one of the girls fell ill and is not prepared to attend school after the nightmarish ordeal, headmistress Sandhya Rani Jana was unrepentant. In her opinion, "if students have to be educated, it is necessary to beat them up".

The incident happened while Jana was doing her rounds of the classes on Thursday. She was apparently furious to see water on the Class VIII floor. She inquired and learnt that three students were responsible for wetting the floor. She hauled them up and started thrashing them severely in front of the class. That was not all. The headmistress then made the three girls strip even as their classmates watched. The girls were then asked to mop up the water off the floor with their clothes.

The ordeal made one of the girls sick. On seeing her collapse, Jana panicked and immediately sent the trio home. The ill girl's friends helped her get up, dressed her and took her home. Once home, the girl narrated her ordeal to her parents and complained of fever, body ache and a swollen right hand.

Her parents came to the school on Friday and lodged a written complaint against the headmistress with the institution's managing committee. Her mother said she shuddered to even think how a woman could torture girls this way.

"My daughter doesn't want to attend school. She is too ashamed to face her classmates after having to strip in front of them. She has broken down mentally," she said. Jana, however, accused the parents of "exaggerating the incident".

School managing committee secretary Tushar Maity said he had heard of the incident on Thursday evening itself. "I received a written complaint against the headmistress from the girl's parents on Friday. A meeting will be convened soon. If the headmistress is found guilty, action will be taken against her. And all teachers will be warned to prevent such incidents. No complaint has, however, been lodged in Sutahata police station."

State education minister Bratya Basu said he "knew nothing about the incident".

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Girl student strip-searched in common room in Bengal Sanjib Chakraborty, TNN | Jul 14, 2012, 02.12AM IST

BONGAON: A high school teacher allegedly forced a 13-year-old girl to strip in the common room, in front of other teachers, after accusing her of stealing Rs 50 from a classmate on Wednesday. The money was not found. This is the second such incident in North 24-Parganas in a fortnight. On June 29, a teacher had yanked off the leggings of a schoolgirl in front of her classmates, including boys, because she was "improperly dressed".

As in the earlier case, the authorities ofGopalnagar Giribala Uchcha Balika Viddyalaimmediately gave the teacher a clean chit and claimed that it was a conspiracy to malign the school. The school allegedly drove out the victim's parents when they went to complain, forcing them to file an FIR at Gopalnagar police station on Friday.

"My daughter was stripped in front of several teachers. She is in deep trauma and can be scarred for life. She keeps crying that she cannot go to school any more or face her classmates. Who gave the teacher the right to strip my daughter, or any student for that matter? If she was suspected of wrongdoing, the authorities should have summoned us," said the girl's mother. The student is in Class VIII.

This comes barely a week after a Class V girl in Visva-Bharati's Patha Bhavan was forced to lick her own urine by the hostel warden. The V-B authorities initially defended the warden and apologized only after a nationwide outcry and the intervention of the Prime Minister's office.

On Wednesday, a Class VIII girl of Giribala school complained to teacher Rupali Dey that a classmate had stolen a Rs 50 note she had kept in her bag. She suspected the girl sitting next to her. The teacher rummaged through the girl's schoolbag in the classroom itself as other students watched. When she did not find anything, she accused the student of hiding the money on her person.

Rupali took her to the common room and ordered her to strip, say the teenager's parents. "I told the teacher repeatedly that I did not steal the money and pleaded with her not to blame me, but she did not listen. After taking me to the common room, Rupali ma'am asked me to undress. When I refused, she forcibly stripped me and started searching," the girl told TOI at her home on Friday. Other teachers in the common room watched as Rupali took off the girl's clothes. But the money was not found.

The teacher asked her to put on her dress and leave, without as much as an apology. The student was in tears by then and asked to be allowed to go home as she was not feeling well. The teacher let her leave.

The girl returned home and broke down before their parents. The news spread quickly and a huge crowd of parents gathered at the school gates on Thursday. Headmistress Anita Biswas paid no heed to their complaint, they said. "We also met the teacher, Rupali Dey, and wanted to know what had happened with my daughter, but she refused to talk to us. I requested to be allowed to speak with the headmistress or any other official of the school but nobody took the matter seriously," said the girl's father.

The parents turned up at the school again on Friday morning. This time, other guardians joined the protest but when they went to meet the headmistress, she allegedly "threw them out", say the parents. They finally lodged a complaint at Gopalnagar police station.

No action had been taken against Rupali till late Friday night either by the police or the school authorities. Bongaon North MLA Biswajit Das promised to help the parents. "I have only now come to know about the incident. If the teacher is found guilty, strong action should be taken against her."

The headmistress, however, refuted the allegation. "The girl was not stripped by the teacher. In fact, she tried to undress on her own to prove that she was innocent because her classmates continued to blame her for stealing money. Our school has a good reputation. Some people are trying to malign us," she said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/Girl-student-strip-searched-in-common-room-in-Bengal/articleshow/14871839.cms

Village backs ban on cellphones for girls Nandita Sengupta, TNN | Jul 14, 2012, 04.35AM IST

AASRA (UP): Six couples in love ran away at a go from this village of over 30,000 a year ago and married in court. Aasra was shocked. That wasn't the last straw. But when one of them returned to live here, the stink got unbearable. Village elders had to restore order. They issued a firman: No mobile phones for women below 40. They wouldn't go to the market unescorted. Boys were banned from playing songs on their mobile phones in the streets.

Not just men, Aasra's women were equally outraged when the couple returned. "How can a brother marry his sister and return to live here," 20-yr-old Asma asks. She has just started Fiza Public School with her dad's help.

Aasra is just under 100 km from Delhi, but it still lives in a time long gone. Most houses look similar. The usual portico where the men lounge. Cattle in the yard (and cars) and then the living quarters from where women seldom step out.

Two things had to be stopped. First, the weekly bazaar of spices and vegetables, says 20-year-old tailor Md Arif. It had become a rendezvous for young couples. Second, boys had to be stopped from taking pictures of girls. "It's abuse of the mobile phone. It's not right, is it, for brothers to take photos of their sisters and show them to their friends?" says Shah Rukh.

Baraut, 20 km towards Delhi, is the nearest town where mobile phones are sold. Aasra is not rich enough to afford mobiles for every person anyway, says Shah Rukh, but a titter goes up. "Chinese mobiles are all over," says a teenager who is quickly hushed.

Voice after voice rallies around the diktat. Mobiles keep you connected, develop relationships. For the village that wears its 'educated' status on its sleeves, boy falling in love with girl is just not on. They impress upon you it's an educated village. Names roll off of persons in government 'positions' and the police, even a judge. Every child goes to one of three primary schools and most girls study till Class X, some till Class XII. The married ones join anganwadis, work for monthly polio drives, awareness drives and so on. Amid all this, there's also 30-year-old Md Parvez, who works in a Delhi carpenter shop and lives in Loni. He had come visiting. What does he think of the diktat? "I have to go for my prayers," he smiles as he fades into the mosque. His eyes wanting to talk.

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