Divya Jyoti Sah, 11, and her sister Divya Roshni, nine, are currently taking psychiatric help at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) after their English teacher at Shree Janata Lower Secondary School, Deuri-3 in Saptari district beat them up mercilessly on June 25. [break]
Nakul Prasad Sah, a freshman teacher recruited under relief quota just seven months ago, had beaten the two sisters severely over a trivial issue.
The younger sister had written a short poem for the teacher in her friend´s copybook. A teacher reportedly liked the poem and took it to show it to the principal Bishwambhar Yadav. The principal also liked it but tore it up. He said it was not right to write poems on teachers, but did not punish the fifth grader.
“After four days Nakul sir suddenly stormed into my class and started caning me,” Divya Roshni recalls. The teacher then entered the sixth grade classroom and started thrashing the elder sister also. “He grabbed me by my hair and smashed my face on the desk,” Divya Jyoti reminisces with horror.
“He then dragged her to the empty staff room and continued beating her. She passed out but he waited for her to regain consciousness and started beating her again,” the girls´ father Narendra Narayan, who stays in Kathmandu, says.
Narendra claims that the younger sister returned home bloodied to complain to her mother about the incident. “She told me about the whole episode and I rushed to the village the next day,” Narendra adds.
He feels that the teacher may have been settling an old score as the elder sister had pointed out his mistakes in class a few months ago. “I had enrolled them in schools in Kathmandu previously. They are very bright and topped their classes in the village,” he said.
Narendra claims that both sisters had bruises all over their bodies while the younger one was bleeding from the ears. “I took them to India for treatment and they have now recuperated. But they are still traumatized and don´t want to go to the school or study,” he adds.
He brought the siblings to Kathmandu to make sure that they recuperate fully. Though TUTH has given them a clean bill of physical health, the duo is still traumatized and the psychiatry department has diagnosed their case as Acute Stress Reaction (ASR).
“They scream and mumble in their dreams and have lost interest and concentration in their studies,” a doctor at the TUTH psychiatry department confirms. “The elder sister is more traumatized. We have referred them to counseling sessions here and they will also be given sedatives,” the doctor adds.
Doctors say the teacher should be punished for beating the girls so mercilessly. But the school has not taken any action so far, the father of the girls claims. “Far from apologizing, he (Nakul) threatened my wife when she went to him,” he states.
“The principal is worried about the prestige of the school and had requested me to not talk about the incident to anyone. I have, nonetheless, lodged a formal complaint with the school, demanding action against the teacher and compensation,” he adds.
The mobile phones of the school principal and vice-principal were switched off when myrepublica.com tried to contact them for their response.
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