3 held after student dies in fight over ‘caste’ in TN

3 held after student dies in fight over ‘caste’ in TN
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Chennai: Three school students have been detained in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district after one of their peers died following a fight among them over coloured wrist bands they were wearing denoting their castes, police said.

The caste-related crime took place in the Pallakkal Pothukudi Government Higher Secondary School near Ambasamuthiram in Tirunelveli.

On April 25, during the lunch break at the school, the deceased Class 12 student, M Selva Suriya, 17, from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) had questioned another Dalit student from Class 11 about his coloured band. They began to have a verbal altercation when the Dalit student found support from two other Muslim students, police said.

“Then the main accused, the Dalit student, hit the deceased student’s ear with a brick,” said L Francis, deputy superintendent of police in Tirunelvelu.

Suriya went home that day after seeking first aid. On the same night after he developed excruciating pain, his parents rushed him to the Tirunelveli government hospital. He underwent a surgery on April 26 for an internal blood clot in his brain. “After the surgery was complete and while he was undergoing treatment, he succumbed to his injuries on Saturday morning,” Francis said.

Following a complaint from his parents, who are daily-wage labourers, police booked three students under sections 302 (punishment for murder) and 294(b) of the Indian Penal Code.

They were detained on Saturday itself and sent to a government observation home for children in conflict with law, police said.

“As the students are having final exams now and they will leave school soon, they’re trying to show some sort of heroism. This entire incident is communal and caste related. Though we are trying to bring such incidents under control, the issue is commonplace in Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi districts,” said Francis.

The Tirunelveli school education department has suspended two PT teachers of the school over the issue as the crime happened inside the campus and it was their responsibility to oversee children during the lunch break, an education official said.

A senior government official in the district denied that it was a caste issue. “All four who were involved belong to different castes and religions, so it would be unfair to brand this as a caste issue. We have to dig deeper and find if there were other factors that led to their fight,” the official said. “It’s unfortunate that the boy died 5 days after being treated in the hospital. All of them are children so we have to also factor in if this was a rare reactionary incident.”

When asked why the students were wearing caste bands and if the school management will be pulled up for not advising students against it, the official said that they are calling for a meeting of the school management committee to bring awareness among the parents, teachers and students. “There are standing instructions that such things shouldn’t be practised. We will step up the awareness.”

A few years ago, a similar issue erupted after it was found that school children in Tamil Nadu’s districts were wearing wrist bands of various colours to differentiate them by their caste identity. After a group of trainee IAS officers from 2018 had raised this issue, the school education department had in July 2019 under the previous AIADMK government issued a circular, ordering all district educational officers to identify schools “where such kind of discrimination is practised and to issue suitable instructions to head masters to prevent such practice immediately and also to take severe action on the persons who are responsible for the discrimination.”

However, then state school education minister K A Sengottaiyan had cancelled the notification, denying that such practice exists. But, in reality, wearing colour bands depicting one’s caste in common in several educational institutions and often lead to discrimination of students from lower castes. A colour denotes a specific caste and students don’t mingle with students wearing band of other colour.

Activist and general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System, Tamil Nadu, Prince Gajendra Babu says that such issues have been happening for a decade and it’s not been addressed as a societal problem. “Both sides are victims here. These are children who are victims of circumstances,” said Babu. “Officials will always deny that this has anything to do with caste because they don’t want it to become a bigger issue so it goes unaddressed. Schools are places where students are meant to overcome social discrimination. Police action and punitive action against students will not solve this problem. The state education department should answer how they plan to solve this problem through the school management system.”


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