Student suspended for ‘rape threats’

A Class 7 student has been suspended after he allegedly threatened a teacher and her daughter with rape, a prominent private school in Gurgaon said in a statement on Tuesday.

In the same school, a Class 8 student allegedly asked a teacher out for a candlelight dinner and sex. It was not known if any action had been taken against this student.

Both the incidents took place last week and the school put out a statement about the suspension on Tuesday evening without saying when the decision was taken.

“A thorough investigation was carried out and stern action was taken, including suspension along with mandated counselling. The school has a zero-tolerance policy towards such acts,” the statement said.

The incident involved a lower middle school student “allegedly indulging in an offensive and highly objectionable cyber prank involving a teacher”, it added.

Gurgaon child welfare committee chairperson Shakuntla Dhull said they would send a notice to the school and investigate the incident.

“We have not received any information regarding this case if we receive we will take cognisance. Once the matter is reported to us we will conduct counselling sessions and try to understand the psychology of the child,” Dhull said.

Experts said a monitoring of the social media activities and internet behaviour of students, in school as well as at homes, could curb such tendencies.

They also blamed unsupervised access to the internet was one of the reasons for rise in such incidents of abuse.

The two incidents come a few weeks after the Gurgaon juvenile justice board ruled that a 16-yearold boy be tried as an adult for allegedly murdering a junior student in the school.

The murder, which shook the country, raised questions about safety of children and also reflected the worrying trend of underage children taking to crime.

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