Jind (Haryana): Shilpa* doesn’t wear her favourite heart-shaped ring anymore. It reminds her of how helpless she felt inside the school principal’s cabin. The door was closed when Kartar Singh Chahal gently stroked her fingers and said it was a nice ring.
“It was a bad touch.” The 15-year-old knew instantly.
Shilpa, who studies in a public school in Haryana’s Jind district, recalls clutching her backpack, her heart pounding. She couldn’t ask the principal to let go of her hand. Those were the longest minutes of her life until Singh, through the dark tinted glass section of the door, saw a teacher approaching his office. He quickly pushed her away and started reprimanding her for not completing the homework.
Lecherous stares, inappropriate touch, improper questions about their personal lives—these experiences are the complaints that around 150 girls have shared with the district education officer. Police suspect that the cycle of abuse began five years ago when Kartar Singh was appointed principal of the girls’ school. An anonymous email sent to the Haryana State Commission for Women on 31 August triggered a chain of events culminating in Singh’s arrest on 5 November. The same letter was also emailed to the offices of President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Despite that, the authorities were slow to act. Farmer bodies and the village sarpanches have called for a Mahapanchayat today [10 November] to seek “justice for Haryana’s daughters”.
“When I asked the principal why he was doing such inappropriate things to me, he threatened me and said ‘Accept it quietly and do as I say. Otherwise I know where all you go to. I will call your parents and tell them that you go outside the school and that I have seen you with a boy. They will never send you back to school again and your education will be affected’,” reads the anonymous letter written in Hindi.
Finally, two months later, after she was made district education officer in October, Jyoti Sheokand launched an investigation. When she first visited the school on 27 October, she kept the teachers away, gathered the students in a room, and convinced them to confide in her.
“It was me and some 200 girls in a room. They were scared that CCTVs would record their confession. I had to really take them into confidence. And that’s when they started pouring out their horrible experience,” said Sheokand.
Girls as young as 11 spoke of how 57-year-old Singh would touch them on their chest and back. Older girls from Class 9 to 12 said that the principal would ask them all sorts of inappropriate questions: have they kissed boys? Were they sexually active? Did they enjoy it?
“I was in tears,” said Sheokand.
However, after the initial floodgates opened, the education officer is now up against a culture of silence and disbelief.
When I asked the principal why he was doing such inappropriate things to me, he threatened me and said ‘Accept it quietly and do as I say. Otherwise I know where all you go to. I will call your parents and tell them that you go outside the school and that I have seen you with a boy. They will never send you back to school again and your education will be affected’
Parents who can’t afford to remove their children from school in the middle of the year don’t want trouble. School teachers insist that Singh is a victim of a smear campaign. And most girls are worried that they will be blamed. Already in villages near the school, many elders are now blaming the scandal on access to social media and the tablets that Class 10 and 12 students had received from the government under the e-Adhigam scheme.
Sheokand got 50 girls to fill a questionnaire, which she has submitted to the State Women’s Commission. So far, only five have given their statements to the police. Shilpa retracted hers submitted before the magistrate.
“I am afraid.”
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Culture of silence
In the two-storeyed school, it’s business as usual. Only the intermittent ringing of the bells bookending classes breaks the silence. At the 8 am assembly, a male teacher delivers a motivational speech on truth and justice.
“Justice comes but with patience. Nobody can hide the truth. Truth eventually comes out,” he says in Hindi, adjusting the volume of the mic.
The girls sitting cross-legged on the floor nod dutifully. A few smile and even clap enthusiastically, but as they file out, they can be seen whispering to each other.
So far, no teacher has spoken to them about Singh’s sudden absence or arrest, though everyone’s talking about it. He has been arrested for allegedly molesting students, booked under IPC Section 354 (assault and sexual harassment) and other sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
The red walls of the school’s corridors are filled with posters, proverbs and positivity. ‘A teacher is like a candle that burns itself to help a student,’ reads one poster.
Staff have distanced themselves from the scandal. All the teaching staff that ThePrint spoke to said the same thing, as if parroting a script they had memorised: “We don’t know anything about it. We feel it’s a conspiracy to malign the school. No girl came to us with any complaint.”
The writers of the anonymous letter had also accused the school of covering up for Singh.
A girl was harassed by the principal for months. When she complained, the entire staff suppressed the matter—reads the letter.
Students allege that they are not allowed to discuss Singh or the anonymous letter in the classroom. Now, the principal’s office is always open. DEO Sheokand had the glass door removed the very day the girls confided in her.
“What was the need of a black glass door? What did the principal have to hide?” asked Sheokand.
A senior teacher has taken over the management duties, but he, too, insists it’s a conspiracy. “The girls don’t have the IQ to write such a letter. The principal was nice to us. No girl came to us with a complaint,” he said.
Other teachers pointed out that there are CCTVs everywhere. If there was something going on, it would have been on camera. There’s one even in the principal’s office.
“But the CCTVs in the principal’s cabin were aligned in such a manner that they didn’t capture his seat. But we have sent the footage to the forensic laboratory,” said a senior police officer who is part of the investigation. Another police officer said the principal, in at least one scenario, targeted a girl after watching her fight with another student. “He brought her to his office, showed her the CCTV footage of the fight and then proceeded to molest her,” the officer said, suggesting a method of exploiting mistakes and wrongdoings.
Outside the school, Class 11 student Harshita* waits for her father to come and pick her up. She was enrolled last year, and found herself alone in Singh’s cabin within two months.
“He touched my forehead and slid his hands to touch my chest,” she says. After that, she made sure she was never alone with him. She can’t tell the police about this, though. “My parents will marry me off If I confess to the police,” Harshita said.
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The past of a ‘predator’
Kartar Singh joined as the principal in 2018, and got the door with black tinted glass installed immediately. It allowed him to see if anyone was coming in, but no one could see anything inside.
There was no tinted glass door during my time.
The principal room would also be open and there were CCTV cameras
—Kartar Singh’s predecessor Indu Kumari, who retired as the principal in 2017.
Following his arrest, former teachers, lecturers, and education department officials have come out to say that Singh’s reputation as a “predator” precedes him. “It’s like giving a cat the responsibility to take care of milk. And the cats love milk. They will not protect it but finish it off,” said a retired block education officer.
And yet there is not a single case against him. “We wanted to protect our jobs. We are to blame as well,” a retired block education officer (BEO) said.
Now, the police are digging into Singh’s past. They’ve learned that he was a senior teacher at a boys’ school where he allegedly sexually harassed the female cook. During his time at another boys’ school, he is accused of sexually harassing a non-teaching female staff member.
“We are locating the daily diary report of both schools,” said the police officer.
But this may be a dead-end. Not all schools maintain records diligently, and the matter has not reached the Secretariat.
At the block education officers’ cabin in Secretariat, Pushpa Rani is busy attending meetings with school principals regarding the need for constituting sexual harassment committees and failing to maintain diaries of the complaints.
“There are sexual harassment committees but they are non-functional. There is no active encouragement and the teachers themselves ask students to keep quiet,” said a principal who recently assumed the role in a co-ed school.
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Villagers’ scrutiny on girls
If silence reigns over the school, it’s the exact opposite in the villages close to Uchana tehsil where the girls live. In the privacy of their homes, mothers and fathers are discussing what to do.
Several parents want to remove their children from the school. “But it’s the middle of the year. No other school will accept our daughters now and we don’t want them to lose a year,” said one parent.
All the families that ThePrint met agreed that lodging official complaints was not the best path.
The daughter of Deepak Kumar (50) joined the school last year. While she was not physically harassed, she has now confided in her parents that Singh would often stare at her in a way that unnerved her. “It felt so uncomfortable that we would hide behind the trees, in the washrooms, or the pillars to avoid his gaze,” she said. Her father is relieved that she was not molested, but he has spent sleepless nights.
“I have been thinking about the girls molested by that man. I can’t keep my daughter here,” Kumar said, sitting on the sofa with his daughter next to him.
In the villages, though, the girls are under scrutiny. Were they too extrovert? Did they encourage Singh?
As Kumar discusses his plans for his daughter, a neighbour walks in to offer what he thinks. “The principal has only molested the girls who were active and spoke a lot. Those women who were shy were not harmed,” he announced dramatically as Kumar and his daughter listened silently. Once he left, Kumar quietly says that his daughter is a shy person and doesn’t like to talk much.
But already the conversation is moving towards caste and politics. The girls’ accusations have laid bare the deep-rooted caste biases. At a grocery store in one of the villages, the hot topic is about Kartar’s fate.
“Elections are around the corner. Kartar is a Jat. The present government punished him and lost out on Jat votes. The community is by his side,” said a father whose two daughters study in the same school.
Another man intervenes asking for concrete evidence. The refusal by the girls to record their statements before the magistrate is weakening the case. “Only five girls have said something but I am sure when the case moves to the court, [even] they will back out,” said another villager.
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Police investigation
At the Uchana police station, members of the Special Investigative Team (SIT) under DSP Amit Bhatia visit the school almost every day. They talk to parents, teachers, non-teaching staff, and students to get to the bottom of the scandal.
There are allegations that Kartar Singh would send obscene messages from his Instagram account, which had a profile picture of Hindu god Hanuman, and then delete them later. The officials received a screenshot of a chat where the principal was threatening the student to keep silent.
“I guess I would be caught. Don’t you dare say anything against me,” the message says. It’s part of an inquiry report prepared by the Jind district education department. One page contains a bullet list of all the complaints made by the students.
He used to ask them whether they had experienced kiss or sex. “He used to touch them at the shoulder, neck and waist. He used to blackmail them saying that he would get them to fail in examinations and spoil their career,” read the report.
But like district education officer Sheokand, the police are being stonewalled by parents and teachers, said an official who did not want to be named. So far, only five girls have recorded their statements before the magistrate under Section 164 of the CrPc, and the SIT is hoping that more students will come forward.
“Kartar Singh was in remand for two days after which he was sent to Jind central jail. We are still investigating the matter,” said SHO Balwan Singh.
But the police force stands seemingly divided on the scandal. “It doesn’t seem like the letter was written by a student. We think it has been sent by a former employee who had a grudge against Singh,” said an officer.
On the other hand, sub-inspector Prem Kumari is in touch with the staff and students, and has shared her phone number with them in the hope that more people will step forward.
Meanwhile, education officials are still receiving messages from girls telling them that their parents are not letting them speak to the police.
“They talk about how vulnerable they are, but said that they can’t speak out,” said an education official who did not want to be named. She added that the students are scared that their “reputation” will be destroyed.
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Instagram profile, flying kisses, absurd messages
At the police station, sub-inspector Prem Kumari and SHO Balwan Singh, who are part of the SIT, are in an uncomfortable situation. They find it difficult to talk about the details of Singh’s alleged actions.
“We live in a society where we respect women and don’t talk about these things with them,” says the SHO.
They are not comfortable talking about the “flying kisses” that Singh was known for. According to them, Singh would call the girls via Instagram on the pretext of homework and give them a flying kiss before dropping the call.
Kartar Singh was in remand for two days after which he was sent to Jind central jail. We are still investigating the matter—SHO Balwan Singh
Here, too, the girls are being blamed. Under the e-Adhigam scheme, free tablets were distributed to students in 2022. The state government scheme provided activated SIM cards with 2GB data to at least five lakh students across Haryana. The officials said that the students had made social media accounts on these tabs, which they used in the school for learning.
“Parents in the villages don’t give phones to their daughters. So these tabs have allowed young men and women to venture into the social media world. And the principal took advantage of this,” said an official.
Back at the girls’ school, students are happy that their principal has been arrested. They were waiting for this moment for a long time and now want to celebrate.
“We all want to cut a cake and celebrate our victory. We really enjoy going to school now. Without fear,” said one student as she got into an auto with her friends.
But none of them will go to the police.
“Do you remember the wrestler’s protest? The MP is still out, so is the sports minister of Haryana. Does speaking against men in power help? It clearly doesn’t.”
(Edited by Prashant)