A music teacher of Delhi Music School, that is run by a trust in the New Delhi area, was on Saturday awarded one year’s imprisonment by a Delhi court for outraging the modesty of a 10-year-old Class 5 student in the school premises in 2004.
Sentencing piano teacher Dileep Solomon to a year’s imprisonment, Metropolitan Magistrate rejected his plea to let him off on probation. The court admitted the plea of Additional Public Prosecutor S.K. Dass that the court would send out a wrong signal to society by allowing the plea of the convict.
The trial court had relied on the testimony of the student to convict the music teacher.
The incident had been reported and followed extensively for a week by the newspapers as it had created doubts in the minds of parents about the safety of their wards in the hands of teachers.
The mother of the girl also had to fight a long battle to get justice as an internal inquiry ordered by the music school had given a clean to the teacher.
She had later challenged the inquiry report in the Delhi High Court that had allowed her plea.
The High Court had also ordered a fresh inquiry into the allegations against the teacher by a retired District Judge who had held him guilty.
Metropolitan Magistrate Geetanjali Goel had earlier convicted him under sections 354 (outraging the modesty of woman) and 509 (making indecent gesture to insult a woman) under IPC.
The defence of the convict was that he had suffered a lot as he had lost his job as well as reputation.
