The principal of a government school in Uttar Pradesh has been suspended for allegedly making 15 girls take off their skirts and run around the school playground as a form of punishment. “School principal Meena Singh has been suspended by the management. A probe committee has been constituted to look into the matter, and a report will be submitted in a week,” Block Education Officer Dileep Kumar told Hindustan Times on Tuesday.
Action was taken against Singh on Monday after the students’ parents protested outside Electricity Board Junior High School for Girls in Anpara, Sonbhadra district. They later lodged a complaint with the district magistrate and asked him to take appropriate action against the principal, reported The Times of India. “The general manager of Anpara Thermal Power Project, which runs the school, has also been asked to take appropriate action,” Sonbhadra District Magistrate Chandra Bhushan Singh told the daily.
Singh meted out the punishment to the Class 8 students on Saturday as they had not done their homework for their Sanskrit lesson. Education Department officials told Hindustan Times that at first, Singh had handed them the “murga” punishment – the schoolgirls were asked to squat, holding their ears by looping their arms behind their knees. This form of punishment is banned in schools. But the principal later told them to take off their skirts and run around the playground for two hours. She also threatened to leak a video of them parading the school skirtless, according to ANI.
Singh, however, has denied the charges, saying she had only asked the girls to inform their parents that they had not done their homework, after they failed to recite Sanskrit verses.
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