Jasmine, a 14-year-old class nine student, committed suicide within hours of a heated exchange on Wednesday between her father and her teachers over non-payment of school fees. She couldn’t bear the inhumane treatment and humiliation afflicted on her father and family in full public view by the school and was forced to take her own life according to a FirstPost article.
Jasmine took her life because her humiliated father couldn’t manage to pay tuition fee dues of Rs 12,000 to her school, DPS Public School Ghaziabad. Four teachers involved in the incident have been arrested since.
But her death has raised some disturbing questions about the way most private schools operate in India; the insensitivity on part of the school management and teachers for whom a school is a money-minting machine; the police, who instead of acting against the school, booked and detained Jasmine’s father Ratan Singh Tomar. Tomar is a poor guy who works with a security agency in Ghaziabad, on false and baseless charges.
Read it here
Representational image from www.projectbrahma.org
