At least five students of a private school in Guwahati were injured when a classmate stabbed them with a broken glass shard. However, the school authorities played down the incident and even tried to hide the matter from the guardians of the victim students.
The shocking incident occurred on Friday and only came to the fore this morning when parents highlighted the matter to the media. In a video message, a guardian said that they were not informed by the school and the injured students were treated and sent home.
The private school in question is SBOA Public School in Guwahati's Garchuk area. A sixth-standard student has been accused of stabbing his classmates injuring five of them. While the school has tried to downplay the severity of the matter, a parent said that the accused has previously been involved in similar instances which has affected other students.
"Yesterday, a student injured several others with a glass shard in presence of a teacher inside the classroom. He forcefully struck them on their hands and neck causing bleeding. However, the school did not inform us and we only came to know when our children came home. We do not know what action will be taken against the culprit. Today, we went to the school and confronted the principal, but were told that they will take some disciplinary action against him. We pointed out that the boy has previously injured others in similar cases and that he is a bad influence," she said adding that such incidents are very frequent in the school, underlining a decline in the school's disciplinary measures.
However, the authorities have said the students were told to bring some items including a glass bottle for project work. A bottle fell on the floor and broke and the culprit kept one of the shards as other pieces were quickly cleared out.
Moreover, according to the school, there was no teacher in the class when the incident took place. "This occurred during the transition, when one teacher went out and another arrived. The glass piece was part of a bottle the students were told to bring for a project. Unfortunately, a bottle fell and broke, but we quickly got that cleared. However, a shard was probably kept by the student, you know... how the naughty ones behave," said the principal Mrinali Chowdhury.
When questioned about the student's previous records of such incidents, they outright denied knowing about any of it. "We don't have any records of that. If we knew, we would definitely have taken action against him," she added.
Meanwhile, according to the vice-principal Prafulla Kr Baruah, the student "just scratched the other classmates similar to scratching with nails". "When we came to know, we took them to an in-school nurse and got them the first aid. We then sent them home," he said.
Baruah further said, "We brought the culprit to the principal. We even called his parents and suggested them to send their child to counselling. We have a counsellor and a psychiatrist here. We have given him counselling and asked the parents to send him for extra private counselling as well for 15 days."
When asked about how many students were attacked, they quickly retorted saying it was "just a playtime scratch". "When I asked him [accused student] what he done, his reply was that he did not think that it would be so severe," the principal said adding that her only takeaway was the media highlighting such a minor incident as a brazen attack where there was "no news" at all.