“What kind of punishment lasts for two hours inside a room,” asks the father of a 16-year-old girl, who jumped from the third floor of a school building in Haryana’s Faridabad and died.
The incident took place on Tuesday at the Navodaya Vidya Niketan Senior Secondary School. The girl’s father, Pramod Kumar, has claimed that his daughter was punished for eating biryani and ordered to stand outside the classroom under the sun. She then went straight to the third floor and jumped to her death. “That is completely false… We checked the footage. She was inside for two hours. What kind of punishment was she given? We don’t know what they did to her inside…
They told us this (the alleged suicide attempt ) only around 2:30 pm, after the school had closed, even though the incident had happened much earlier.”
The girl, Janvi, then went to the vice principal’s room and returned after nearly two hours, according to CCTV footage accessed by Kumar. When asked if Janvi had ever received punishment such as standing under the sun before, Kumar said “no”. He further accused the school of “hiding its shortcomings” and informing the family late about the unfortunate incident.
However, an investigation into the matter is underway. Speaking to NDTV, a fellow parent, whose four children studied at the same school, claimed that the school is infamous for giving harsh punishments to children.
Kumar alleged that the family was informed about their daughter jumping from the school building “at the last moment” and that the school administration left the hospital “without meeting” the parents. No complaint has been filed seeking for registering an FIR, according to the Station House Officer Sumir Singh.
