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Headmaster suspended for failing
to alert family about missing girls

MUMBAI - More than a week after the shocking incident of the rape and murder of three minor girls in Bhandara in Maharashtra, the state government on Friday suspended the headmaster of the school where two girls were studying.

The government suspended the headmaster as he did not alert the parents of the girls or the police when they did not turn up for the mid-day meal at the school in the afternoon. Two girls aged five and nine, were studying at the school, and their elder sister, 11, had gone to fetch them. However, on the way back home all three went missing. The bodies of the three girls were recovered from a well two days later. The police had initially refused to file a first information report (FIR) when the family members had gone to register the complaint on the night of February 14. Later, when the bodies were recovered, they registered it as a case of accidental death.

The post-mortem report, however, indicated that the three girls had been raped before being killed. “The negligence on the part of the police and the lethargic pace of investigations into the dastardly crime have angered the people here,” Anil Borkar, secretary, Gramin Yuva Pragati Mandal, an NGO that works for the empowerment of women in Bhandara district, told Khaleej Times on Friday. “The police station in-charge was later suspended by the government and now the headmaster too has been suspended.”

According to Borkar, the incident was ignored for days with even the state government not concerned about the inability of the local authorities to nab the criminals. It was only after the local people protested by blocking the national highway did the government wake up and send senior police officers to Murwadi village to investigate the crime. “And now you have a series of leaders from all political parties visiting the mother and the other family members and offering their condolences,” says Borkar.

nithin@khaleejtimes.com