- Monday, April 29, 2024
The girl approached a child rights body saying she would lose a year despite being a bright student.
By: Shubham Ghosh
IN a shocking incident, a school in India has been accused of stopping a girl, a gang-rape survivor, from appearing for her annual examinations.
The girl, a student of class 12 in the north-western state of Rajasthan, who survived rape committed by her uncle and two other men in October last year, alleged that the school officials asked her not to sit for the tests saying she would ruin the “atmosphere”.
The girl, who moved the Child Welfare Commission (CWC) in Ajmer district of the state, which is known for the notorious crime, said that for the previous four months, she had been homeschooling instead of attending classes as advised by the school.
Read: Indian judge booked for asking gang-rape survivor to strip to see her injuries
But she faced a shocking experience when she went to the school to collect her admit card in March, as the school officials allegedly refused to acknowledge her to be a student of the institute, the report added.
According to India’s NDTV, the school authorities, however, said that the student was not issued the admit card since she remained absent from classes for four months.
Read: Fury over foreign tourist’s gangrape in India’s Jharkhand: ‘What they wanted was to rape me’
The girl then approached the CWC, leading it to file a case and launch an inquiry. Anjali Sharma, the chairperson of CWC, informed the broadcaster that their primary objective was to enable the girl to sit for the exams she missed last month.
“When I spoke to the girl, she told me that she was dejected as she is a bright student. She had scored 79 per cent [marks] in her class 10 board exams,” she said.
“… but she may lose a year due to the school’s negligence,” she added.
India has gained notoriety for its unjust treatment of survivors of sexual assault, with at least 31,516 reported rape cases in 2022, marking a 20 per cent increase from the year before, as per the country’s National Crime Records Bureau.
The actual figure is thought to be significantly higher due to the stigma surrounding sexual violence and victims’ distrust in law enforcement. Women’s rights advocates highlight that this issue is especially severe in rural regions, where communities frequently stigmatize survivors.
While India’s rape law was amended in 2013 following a gruesome incident on a moving bus in New Delhi in December 2012,
criminalizing stalking and voyeurism and reducing the age at which an individual can be prosecuted as an adult from 18 to 16. Yet, rights activists allege that the government is not doing enough to shield women and penalize the attackers.
In November 2019, three government college professors in the northern state of Haryana were suspended for allegedly disallowing a gang-rape survivor from appearing for her exams. She was then provided with additional security to complete her paper.
