ANDAL (West Bengal): Within weeks of the death of 11-year-old Delhi school girl Shanno due to the alleged cruelty of a teacher, a 10-year-old girl student in this remote West Bengal town died after an angry teacher hurled a duster that hit her on the forehead.

The incident took place at a school in Andal, 150km from Kolkata, on Thursday. The student, Babli Ghosh, began vomiting in the classroom soon after.

hockingly, the school management did not inform Babli’s guardians — her parents live in another town — until after she had died, around 5pm. Rekha Bhakat, the teacher who hurled the duster, is on the run. The headmistress filed a police complaint only after she was gheraoed by angry parents on Friday.

One of Babli’s classmates said, “She (the teacher) found some mistakes while going through Babli’s Bengali notebook. She shouted at her and in a fit of rage threw the duster at her.” The duster hit Babli, who was sitting in front row, on her forehead. She collapsed and vomited four times, she said.

Teachers rushed Babli to a nearby nursing home in Andal Bazar around 12.45pm but her condition deteriorated. At 4.30pm, when the child became still, she was taken to a hospital in the industrial town of Durgapur, where doctors declared her dead on arrival.

It was only then that her guardians — a maternal uncle and aunt — were informed. On Friday, hundreds of people surrounded the school demanding that the teacher be handed over to them. Headmistress Tapati Bhattacharjee called the police but the crowd refused to budge. Babli’s body was kept at Andal police station as people did not allow the police to take it to Durgapur Hospital for a post-mortem. The gherao was lifted only after the headmistress lodged a police complaint.

source: TOI