Daijiworld Media Network – Beltangady (SP)

Beltangady, Aug 21: Three students of Nala government primary school in the taluk were arrested on the charge of force-feeding urine to a disabled fourth standard student of this school.

The victim is learnt to be suffering from speech and hearing disabilities. Three students of his school have been accused of forcing the boy to consume urine. The victim's father had filed a complaint about this act in the police station here. A representative of the department of public instruction also visited the school to take stock of the situation.

The policemen had transferred the case to Juvenile Justice Board as the accused are minors. On Tuesday August 19, three children were arrested, after identifying them as the accused.

On being produced in the court, they were asked to be produced again on Wednesday August 20. However, the parents of these children, who were angry at the fact that the children were directly taken to the police station without consulting them, got admitted them into a hospital.

It is reported that when the disabled boy, who is said to be good in studies, was returning home last Wednesday, the trio stopped him, snatched away his water bottle, mixed urine in it and forced him to consume it. Although the boy explained to the family what had happened through gestures after reaching his home, the family members failed to apprehend what he wanted to say. After he refused to attend the school the next day, they visited the school and got to know what had transpired.

As all the three accused belong to a particular community, the incident soon acquired communal hue. A number of people, who noted that the boy at the receiving end of this treatment was a Brahmin and all the three accused are from a particular community, mobbed the school on Wednesday August 20, accusing a teacher of the school of having given wrong names of the accused students to the victim. The crowd insisted on immediate transfer of the teacher concerned.

Force-feeding of urine was a serious and inhuman act and the system is expected to do justice to the concerned. There is every possibility of the incident snowballing into political one upmanship, going by the turn of the event at present.