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Bengal

Teacher held for sexually assaulting Class II girl

Kolkata: Police have arrested a teacher of South Kolkata's Carmel Primary School on Friday for allegedly sexually abusing a Class II student.
The accused dance teacher, Soumen Rana, was arrested by Tollygunge police station and was suspended by the school authorities. The incident brought back memories of sexual assault of a four-year-old girl at GD Birla School in Ranikuthi in December 2017.
State Education minister Partha Chatterjee condemned the incident and said it is not proper to have male teachers in girls' schools. "Our department has issued a series of guidelines to private schools and if we find that these are violated, we will have to interfere," he clarified.
According to the allegations of the victim's parents, the dance teacher has been indulging in this act for more than a month, but the incident came to light on Thursday evening when the minor narrated the matter to her mother.
According to reports, the accused teacher had also threatened the girl with dire consequences if she informed anyone else about it, even saying that he would bury her in the school grounds if she opened her mouth.
Guardians started agitating in front of the school since Friday morning alleging that the authorities did not take any lesson from the GD Birla incident and no special security was arranged for the students. "Why should there be a male teacher in a school for girls," a parent questioned.
"We have repeatedly urged the school authorities to have female attendants and CCTVs to be placed at strategic locations. But they have turned a deaf ear," Mitali Roy, a guardian added.
When the police tried to bring out the accused from inside the school and take him to the police station, the agitating guardians were embroiled in a scuffle with the cops as some of them tried to stop the accused from being taken out of the school campus. The Officer-in-Charge and the additional Officer-in-Charge of Tollygunge police station also sustained injuries during the scuffle. The police were allegedly hit with helmets.
The sleuths are also not ruling out the presence of outsiders who had incited the agitating parents. "We are scanning the CCTV footage outside the school to find out who was responsible for the attack on the cops when the latter was trying to provide a safe passage for the students stuck inside the school because of the agitation," a senior police officer said. The principal of the school refused to comment and was escorted out of the school premises by the cops.
The sleuths have slapped Section 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) against the accused.
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