02, Oct 2015

Priyanka and nine others landed in a hospital after a “brutal” cane charge by the station house officer of the local station, who they alleged was “intoxicated.”
Written by Mohammad Hamza Khan | Tonk | Published:October 2, 2015 2:40 am
After two months without three subject teachers and futile assurances from the principal, Priyanka Swami and her friends in Class X of a government school in Rajasthan’s Tonk district decided to do what the boys in nearby schools and colleges often did: protest. However, things went wrong very soon. Priyanka and nine others landed in a hospital after a “brutal” cane charge by the station house officer of the local station, who they alleged was “intoxicated.”
“We didn’t have any teachers in our class on Monday. So we decided to block the main road near our school on Tuesday morning to demand for teachers. We had often seen boys sit on a protest,” said Priyanka, now recuperating at a government hospital in Tonk. Ever since the new session had started on July 1, her class didn’t have teachers for Sanskrit, social science and English. “When we took it up with our principal, he gave us assurances, but no teacher ever showed up,” said Manisha Saini of Class VIII, sitting beside Priyanka at Saadat hospital. They are students of Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalaya in Chooru village of Uniara tehsil.
For a school with 291 students and classes 1 to XI — class XI introduced only this year — the school had only five teachers, one of whom was in line for transfer. So, at a time, only five classes could run, while six others would be idle.