A government schoolteacher who made a class II student clean human waste manually was on Friday sentenced to undergo five years’ imprisonment under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, by a special court in Namakkal.
The judge also imposed a penalty of ₹1,000 on her.
According to the prosecution, in 2015, when R. Vijayalakshmi was working as a teacher at the Government Middle School in Ramapuram, near Namakkal, she asked a Dalit student to manually clean the waste of a classmate.
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The boy did as the teacher told him to and later informed his parents.
Protest
Following this, protests were held outside the school demanding action against the teacher.
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The boy’s parents also filed a complaint at the Namakkal police station and a case was registered against the teacher under provisions of the Act. She was suspended from the school thereafter.
The case was investigated by T. Manoharan, Namakkal DSP, and a chargesheet filed before the Special Court for trial of cases registered under the SC/ST Act.
Maximum sentence
After hearing the arguments advanced by public prosecutor Madheshwaran and the defence counsel, sessions judge K. Dhanasekaran sentenced the teacher to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of ₹1,000 under Section 3(1)(x) of the SC/ST Act.
“The teacher has asked a student from the Scheduled Caste community to clean human waste of another student manually. The court has awarded the highest punishment to the accused under the Act,” said Mr. Madheshwaran.
The accused would have to serve a further six months of prison time if she failed to pay the fine.