Patna: The Bihar government has suspended some teachers at a government school for setting books on fire to beat the biting cold this week.
Officials said some middle school teachers at Semapur village in Katihar district asked the pupils to bring books from the storeroom and set them ablaze to keep themselves warm.
Chilly weather has killed more than 75 people in Bihar in the past fortnight.
The burnt books were meant to be distributed among pupils free of cost under federal government's ‘Education For All' programme.
The news prompted the authorities to immediately order an investigation into the incident.
"We found the incident [of setting books on fire] true during our investigation and finding it quite serious, we have placed two teachers under suspension. We have also registered a case against the guilty teachers with the police," the District Education Officer, Katihar, Srinivas Tiwari, told Gulf News by phone yesterday. The suspended teachers include the headmistress, Kumari Pratima Sah.
Cold wave
The education department official said it was really a serious matter that the teachers set the books on fire. "We are not going to spare them," Tiwari said.
Local media reports said the teachers did not spare even those books that had a page with India's national anthem printed in bold letters. TV grabs on local news channels showed the burnt national anthem strewn all over the school campus. Last year, some teachers from another government school in south Bihar's Gaya district were placed under suspension for similar charges.
The entire state has been reeling from severe cold wave for more than two weeks with the day temperature plummeting to as low as 4 degree Celsius in some regions, resulting in more than 75-cold related deaths across the state.
The sweeping cold wave has forced the authorities to close down schools till further orders.
