Unnao: The Class 7 student was in for a shock when she walked into her headmaster’s office at an Unnao government school two months ago. The headmaster — a man aged 51 years — allegedly caught hold of her and started kissing her forcefully.
She fought him off and made a run for it. When she discussed the incident with her classmates, the true extent of the problem dawned on them.
“Others shared their ordeal and said that he had been sexually harassing them as well,” said the mother of one of the female students who were allegedly sexually assaulted or harassed by headmaster Rajesh Kumar.
“It was then, around August, that they finally told a teacher what was happening.”
The Unnao case, believed to have been exposed by school staffers the students had confided in, is a sordid saga of sexual crime at an educational institute. It comes weeks after a similar episode was reported from a public school in Haryana’s Jind.
The Unnao case took place at a ‘composite’ co-ed school — from pre-primary to Class 8 — which has 189 students, of whom 86 are girls.
So far, an estimated 17 students have come forward with allegations of assault or harassment by Kumar — allegations of being kissed, and of inappropriate touching on the neck, chest, stomach and private parts, and allegations of being bribed for silence.
The oldest of the victims is said to be 14. The youngest, six and a half.
The headmaster also taught maths and science in the school, and he allegedly used this as a tool to invite students into his office.
Speaking to ThePrint, Unnao Child Welfare Committee (CWC) chairperson Preeti Singh said the sexual assault had been going on for the past two years.
“Three former students who have now passed out from the school and are studying at the intermediate level have also confirmed being sexually assaulted when they were students of the composite school,” she added.
“We have recorded the statements of 17 students so far who have confirmed the allegations of sexual assault, harassment and bad touch,” Singh said.
Rajesh Kumar was arrested on 27 November, and booked under IPC sections 354 (assault or use of criminal force to any woman to outrage her modesty) and 294 (obscene acts and songs), and sections 9f (whoever being on the management or staff of an educational institution or religious institution, commits sexual assault on a child in that institution) and 10 (aggravated sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012.
But the students affected are still reeling under the aftermath of the scandal — many are facing censure from parents for not exposing the abuse earlier, while others are under pressure to keep quiet for fear of stigma.
The mother of a Class 7 student said she had been beaten up by her alcoholic father and asked this reporter to leave their house. Another said she had herself given her daughter a tough hiding, because she had confided in her teachers first.
Many other parents said they had stopped sending their daughters to school — mid-session — as they looked for alternative institutions.
The fear of stigma, say child welfare officials, may prevent more girls from speaking up, which could ultimately hurt efforts to take the case to its logical conclusion.
“The main problem that we are facing is that parents are stopping the students from talking to us,” said Preeti Singh of the Unnao CWC. “We want to provide them with legal aid and counselling,” she added.
CWC officials say so far statements of none of the 17 children have been recorded by a magistrate under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC).
“Recording of statements under CrPC 164 has not been possible because parents of the children concerned are refusing to involve them with the legal process,” said Singh.
“They are saying that they will rather stop sending the girls to the school. Our team is trying to convince them but police has been unable to get their statements recorded so far,” she added.
Also Read: Haryana girls stood up against ‘predator’ principal. But parents, teachers pulling them back
How it became public
The Unnao case came to light on 25 November, when a team from the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and the Unnao CWC visited the school.
They were following up on a complaint from a “confidential source”.
Preeti Bhardwaj, an NCPCR member who led the team, said the girls who had admitted to being sexually assaulted/harassed were aged between 6.5 and 14 years.
At least three-four of them, it is learnt, have admitted to facing “aggravated sexual assault”.
Almost all the 17 students confirmed having been given money by the headmaster, said Singh, adding that the amount mostly ranged from Rs 5-10, but at least two girls were given Rs 100.
According to Singh, the headmaster would “tell them things like ‘kisi ko mat batana (don’t tell anyone about the assault)’ and ‘tum jab badi ho jaogi, tab tumse baat karenge (I will talk to you when you grow up)’”.
The mother of a Class 7 student said her daughter had told her about the assault two days before NCPCR-CWC officials arrived at the school.
“I advised her to stop going to his office at all, assuring her that we would talk to the teachers. But before we could, the NCPCR team arrived and recorded the statements of the girls,” she added.
Discussing the details her daughter had shared, she said, “When the girls visited the headmaster’s office to get their notebooks checked, he would forcefully kiss them and harass them,” she said.
Some students were being called to school even on Sundays on the premise of preparations for sports events, she added.
“Sometimes, even when the staff came to school for work related to government schemes, the headmaster would call the girls… for no reason,” the mother said, adding that “the teachers had started keeping an eye on the headmaster”.
The mother of another student said the teacher who first got to know “first advised the students not to visit the headmaster’s office alone”.
It is this teacher who is also believed to have told the students to tell their parents.
“She told them to only meet him in groups, and that, too, only when they need to get their notebooks checked by him,” she added.
“Later, all the other teachers, too, got to know,” she said. “The cooks overheard some of the students discussing their ordeal last week. A group of teachers then collectively spoke to the girls.”
Bhardwaj said they “are preparing a report” on the incident, and will submit the same to the NCPCR chairperson, following which their recommendations will be sent to the Unnao administration.
As part of her report, she added, she will give a recommendation to the district administration to ensure the children and their parents are provided regular counselling by child rights experts.
“The district probation officer (DPO) and NGOs working for child rights can help in this,” she added.
Beatings by parents, fear of stigma
The episode has cast an air of fear and trepidation among parents of the girls at the school.
The mother of a Class 6 student — who is among the 17 whose statement has been recorded by the NCPCR — tried to distance herself from the allegations.
“One of the girls in our mohalla has informed me about the assault she went through. My daughter did not face anything and has not told me anything about it,” she added. “Please leave and don’t talk [about this] in front of my husband. He is short-tempered.”
The mother of a Class 7 student said she was scared of visiting local courts and police stations.
“We are scared. We had never imagined that a guru could do such a thing,” she added, saying many students who faced assault “are not coming forward”.
Another parent said her “12-year-old daughter didn’t tell me that the headmaster was giving her money”.
“When I got to know that she told the teachers that the headmaster touched her inappropriately, I beat her up because I was angry that she did not share anything with me,” she added.
She said she did not want her daughter to talk to any government officials or police personnel.
“I won’t send her to this school anymore. I will not send her to give any statement. I will change her school,” she said.
Reached for comment, Unnao DPO Chavanath Rai said he had no information about parents stopping children from going to school, adding that the issue was “not related” to his department.
“A police inquiry is on (in the sexual assault case),” he added.
A hurdle in road to justice
Speaking to ThePrint, Bhardwaj said resistance and discouragement from parents was the reason why over half the female students were absent from school the day the NCPCR team arrived.
Bhardwaj said what was happening in Unnao “is similar to the case from Haryana’s Jind, where around 143 students are involved”.
“Out of 86 girls, only 42 were present when we reached the school because their parents had stopped them,” she added. “We kept our visit confidential and first spent hours taking the children into confidence, as many girls had been tutored by their parents not to talk about the assault to anyone,” she said.
While a counsellor and the child protection officer of the district have been interacting with the children’s parents and trying to convince them to cooperate with police and the CWC and help record their statements, discussions are also under way on sending a magistrate to the village to take statements.
“A member of the UP State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (UPSCPCR), too, had visited the village on 2 December, and we are trying for an arrangement where the statements of the children can get recorded in the village itself,” Singh said.
When contacted, UPSCPCR chair Devendra Sharma said a member of the commission had gone to the spot, adding that he had sought a report on the matter.
“The report is likely to be tabled before me Wednesday. We will try that the statements of the children get recorded,” he said.
Unnao Superintendent of Police Siddharth Shanker Mishra said, on their part, the police were engaging social workers to persuade the parents for cooperation.
“We are trying to persuade the parents, telling them that there is no problem in recording of statements,” he added. “This is important from the point of view of the investigation also. The police have been facing some resistance from the parents,” he said.
‘Important to ensure students are not tutored’
For a just conclusion to the matter, legal experts say, it is imperative for police to ensure the children are not tutored or held back from revealing their ordeal.
Former Supreme Court judge Madan B. Lokur told ThePrint that this was a very difficult case and needed to be handled with great sensitivity.
Lokur said the CWC needed to assist the police in this difficult situation. “Many sex-related crimes are not reported only because of social stigma and the future of the survivor,” he added, saying the “investigating officer will have a difficult task before him/her to arrive at the truth”.
“Incomplete or tutored statements by the girls will certainly dilute the case,” he said. “Whether a statement is weak or truthful or not will be determined only at the trial.”
Supreme Court lawyer Kumar Mihir said, “ultimately, it is the statements of the child before a judicial magistrate under Section 164 of the CrPC that will have precedence over any other statement”.
Mihir added that the onus was also on the POCSO courts to “make the legal process child-friendly such that there is no aggressive questioning and character assassination of the child”.
“The problem in such cases is that people get intimidated due to the legal process, which is why the conviction rate is very low,” he added.
In July 2022, Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani told Parliament that 47,221 cases were registered under POCSO in 2020, with a conviction rate of 39.6 percent that year. The conviction rate was 32.2 percent for 2021, according to another parliamentary reply dated December 2022.
‘A decade of POCSO’ — an analysis of POCSO cases tried in e-courts between 2012 and 2021, carried out by the Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India (JALDI) Initiative at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, a think tank, in collaboration with the Data Evidence for Justice Reform (DE JURE) programme at the World Bank — found that 43.44 percent of trials end in acquittals and only 14.03 percent lead to convictions.
In most cases, Mihir said, pressure from the media helps push the civil society and bodies like the NCPCR and CWC to pay attention to the case and help the families with legal aid. “Otherwise, the momentum around the case dies down,” he added.
This is an updated version of the report. Fresh details on the case have been added, and the attribution for a quote from one of the victims’ mothers has been corrected
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)