By Matters India Reporter
Bina, April 19, 2023: A Catholic school in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has sought police protection following threats from a rightwing student body.
A delegation of 30 teachers, majority of them females, on April 18 called on Sub-Divisional Magistrate and local police station incharge and handed over a memorandum seeking police protection for Nirmal Jyoti Senior Secondary School in Bina, Sagar district.
A day earlier, members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) staged sit-in front of the school for more than three hours.
ABVP is the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party that rules the state.
“The ABVP members blocked the main gate and did not allow the students and their parents to move out,” school principal Sister Grace Tharayil told Matters India April 19.
Although the school officials had informed the police about the ABVP threat to stage the protest, police did not provide security that helped the activists to create havoc, said the member of the Congregation of Mother Carmel (CMC) congregation.
The protesters accused the school of organ trafficking, religious conversion and demanded the withdrawal of its permission to function.
“They called off the protest with a warning to the school management that they would come back again after a week if the school is not shut down,” said Gautam Niranjan, the school’s sports teacher.
The school, started in 1987, has more than 2000 students.
It came to the limelight on April 6 when a team of the state’s Commission for Protection of Child Rights conducted a surprise inspection.
The team led by Omkar Singh and Nivedita Sharma, members of the state panel for child protection, searched the school campus including a guest house adjacent to the school.
The team reportedly seized a human foetus from the school science laboratory and questioned the authorities for keeping it there. The team also wanted to know the purpose of a guest house in the school campus.
Soon after the inspection, the school was accused of illegal activities such as organ trafficking among others despite the fact that “we don’t do any illegal acts,” Sister Tharayil said.
“The foetus was more than 20-years-old and used for academic purposes in the early days. Now, we use technology like animation now,” she explained.
The protestors also defamed the female staff working in the school demanding a DNA test on them, the principal said.
“We are not against any inspection, provided its purpose is genuine and for improving the academic environment of the school. It should benefit the students. But in this case it looked like a vendetta or targeting the institution that served the areas for more than 35-years,” the nun alleged.
She also said they do not indulge in conversion or any illegal activity. “It can be crosschecked with the students and their parents or our former students,” the principal asserted.
The principal said she has no clue why they are being targeted. “It seems to be politically motivated to tarnish the image of one of the top private schools in the locality,” she added.
The school staff, however, accused the police of inaction that led to the violence in the school campus. The ABVP activists forced their way into the campus and destroyed flower pots.
A police officer said they would look into the school complaint.
The federal and provincial child right protection panels have carried our surprise searches in Christian schools, hostels and orphanages and filed many criminal cases after accusing them of indulging in religious conversion, keeping religious books, sexual abuse of children, physical assault among other others.
Recently, a Catholic priest principal of a Church run school in Gwalior diocese was jailed for three days, a layman principal of a Catholic school in Jabalpur diocese was jailed for more than a month for alleged sexual abuse of girl students.