Kolkata: The principal and three teachers
of La Martiniere for Boys school, who allegedly drove student
Rouvanjit Rawla to commit suicide, on Wednesday challenged the order
for their trial on charges of abetment to suicide of a child
which carries a maximum sentence of death, in a higher court.
Chief Judge, Sessions Court, Dipak Saha Roy admitted
their revision application against an order of the 12th
Metropolitan Judge of Bankshall Court to re-frame charges
after the police watered them down.
The magistrate had on November 19 ordered that the
four would be tried under section 305 (abetment to suicide of
a child or insane person), section 324 (voluntarily causing
hurt) and section 34 (common intention) of IPC.
Section 305, if proved, can invite the death sentence
or imprisonment for life or a prison term not exceeding ten
years and a fine.
Their trial, as per the magistrate`s order, was to
begin before a session’s judge on December 14.
Admitting the revision application by the teachers
claiming that there was no ground to try them under section
305, the Chief Judge ordered that the matter would be heard on
December 10.
Rawla was found hanging at his residence on February
12 this year, four days after being allegedly caned by the
principal for misbehaviour and disobedience.
Principal Sunirmal Chakravarti and the three teachers
- Garnian, Partho Dutta and David Raun - had been arrested on
October four for the suicide of the 13-year-old class VII
student but were given bail on the same day by the chief
metropolitan magistrate as all the sections of IPC they were
chargesheeted under were bailable.
The case had been filed by the student`s father Ajay
under section 305 of IPC, but the police had filed lesser
charges under sections 323 and 324 , 352 (punishment without
grave provocation) and 23 of the Juvenile Justice (negligence
of duty).
Ajay had filed a police complaint at the Shakespeare
Sarani Police station here four months after the incident.
PTI
