Gang raped by teachers' shocks country

In a disgraceful act, six teachers of Primary Teacher’s Training College (PTC) in Patan city, shattered all the trustworthy and pious ‘guru-shishya' (teacher-student) relationship by allegedly gang raping 18-year old girl student over the last six months.

The college premises jam-packed by nearly 100 girl students, who went on berserk on Monday morning in protest against the college authorities to not taking stern action against the alleged gang of six professor rapist.

A first year student of the Primary Teachers Training College on Monday alleged that teachers at the institution had gang raped her 14 times in the past six months.

Owing to threatening to fail her in the exams, she remained silent and the group of six teachers used to force themselves upon the victim, the police said.

The traumatised girl, who has been sent to the civil hospital for a medical examination, was in a sadistic condition. She lodged FIR, where she stated that the teachers have raped her several times at the different solitary places in the college premises. She alleged that the accused used to lottery system to decide the order in which they would take turns on her.

The case may remained in the cold bag, if the victim out of fear of getting pregnant had not disclosed the incident filled with exploitation to one of her friends.

This is the beginning of the disclosure of the shameful act. Now many girls have stored their courage and alleged that they were too frequently molested by the teachers. Students also claimed the teachers had asked them for sexual favours. The girl students tolerated all these because teachers were decisive in deciding their career. They allocated the internal marks and could shatter their academic performance.

"Based on the complaint, we have arrested the accused — Ashwin Parmar, Manish Parmar, Mahendra Prajapati, Kiran Patel, Suresh Patel and Atul Patel," said Patan SP Raghvendra Vatsa. He also said police were investigating whether any other girl was being similarly harassed.

The incident took a new turn when the local MLA and revenue minister Anandiben Patel and Maya Kodnani, minister of state for higher education rushed to the college and met secretly with the college authorities, but refused to meet with the parents. The parents have called for a strike in Patan Tuesday.

"The girl has said that she was gangraped at least 14 times during the past six months," said DSP Raghevendra Vats. "We have arrested all the six accused namely, Manish Parmar, Mahendra Prajapati, Ashwin Parmar, Suresh Patel, Atul Patel and Kiran Patel for rape, molestation and intimidation, and are further investigating the case.

Meanwhile, the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has expressed sympathy for the victim and her family. He announced an amount of Rs one lakh to the victim for showing courage to expose the culprit. He said that he would personally look into the matter and see all the culprits would get punished severely so that a model be set in the society.

The state government has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident considering peoples’ widespread protest and agitation demanding justice for the victim and immediate sentencing of all the accused.

Media attention

There are about 1500 rapes reported in India every year, according to the reports published by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). But, unfortunately only a handful of incident finds a proper place in the Media coverage. This is undoubtedly a stigma on the fourth pillar of democracy, which pounces on only those cases, which have a face in it.

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