India: Bihar court hands out death penalty to principal for raping schoolgirl

Patna: A local court in Bihar has sentenced to death a private school principal for repeatedly raping a Grade 5 school girl. The 11-year-old girl had to quit studies to overcome her mental trauma and frequently appear in court to record her statements.

Additional sessions judge of special court, Patna, Awadhesh Kumar also awarded rigorous life imprisonment to another school teacher who connived with the school principal and convinced the girl to go to the principal’s chamber. The court delivered the judgment on Monday, more than two years after the case was registered with the police in September 2018.

“The culprits have been very cruel to the girl and don’t deserve mercy,” the court observed, before handing out the death penalty to the school principal, the main culprit. The court also ordered a compensation of Rs1.5 million to be paid to the victim. Her father is a daily wage earner.

“The court described it as the rarest of the rare case to award a death sentence. This is the first time in Bihar that anyone has been handed death for raping a minor,” special public prosecutor Suresh Chandra Prasad told the media.

The girl was admitted to a private school located in Phulwarisharif locality of Patna which was being run by the school principal Arvind Kumar alias Raj Sighania. According to the police, the victim was first called in the principal’s room in August 2018 saying he was correcting her notebook there. From there, she was taken to another room where she was raped at least seven times over a period of two months, police said. The girl had remained silent as the principal had threatened to kill her brother who was also enrolled in the same school.

The incident came to light after the girl complained of abdominal pain and started vomiting at home. She was taken to a local doctor who examined and found her pregnant. Later, the parents registered a case with the local police.

A DNA test was conducted. “The DNA sample was collected from the victim’s foetus and sent to the forensic laboratory of the state police. The DNA sample matched with that of the school principal,” special public prosecutor Prasad said. The principal even set his school on fire to destroy the evidence.

“I have got justice in the end. I have visiting the courts for the past two years,” the girl’s mother told the media on Tuesday. She said the accused principal threatened her family with dire consequences many times in the past. Due to constant threats she left Patna but continued fighting for justice. According to her, she also faced pressure from the police as the father of the school principal was a police official posted in a neighbouring Jharkhand state.