Add StudioX as a preferred source on GoogleCCTV footage showing an eight-year-old boy brutally beating a six-year-old girl at a school in northern India has caused shock and anger across the country, according to BBC News Asia.
The girl was seriously injured. Her family says she is now out of danger and recovering in hospital, but remains traumatised.
What happened at the school
The assault took place on 28 October at a government school in Panchkula, in Haryana state. It came to light over the weekend after the CCTV video went viral on social media.
Police say the boy, a third-grade student, told the girl that her father was waiting for her in a classroom. That is where he attacked her. The girl is in kindergarten. The boy’s motive is not known.
The family went to the school after an auto-rickshaw driver said he had come to collect the girl but could not find her. Her father told BBC Punjabi that no one at the school knew where she was when classes ended. The boy who attacked her then told him she was in a classroom upstairs, where he found her badly hurt.
“When I saw her, I almost screamed,” he said, adding that he feared she had been killed. He asked: “If a child isn’t safe in school, then where will she be safe?”
Medical care and police response
The girl was first taken to a local hospital and then transferred to the multi-speciality PGIMER hospital in nearby Chandigarh. A hospital statement said she arrived with critical injuries and is being cared for by a multidisciplinary team of specialists.
The hospital’s director, Vivek Lal, said in the statement that the situation was deeply concerning and that the aim was to give her the best possible care and support. The hospital later shared a photo of Dr Lal with the girl smiling as she sat on her father’s lap.
Police say they have registered a case. Senior police official Aditi Singh said in a video statement on Saturday that a first information report (FIR) had been filed against the school management for negligence, and that investigators are examining what happened.
The school principal and two other teachers have been suspended over suspected negligence, police say. The Haryana state government has also formed a committee to investigate the incident and whether there was any negligence.
How the law treats the boy
Under Indian law, an eight-year-old cannot be punished or sent to jail. Another senior police official, Amarinder Singh, said the boy has been placed in an observation home run by the Juvenile Justice Board, where he is undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
Aditi Singh said the boy is being assessed by mental health experts under the Juvenile Justice Act and that further action will follow accordingly. Amarinder Singh said that in cases involving minors, the emphasis is on reformation and counselling.
Many people in India have voiced anguish over the girl’s injuries and the violence shown in the footage.
Source: BBC News Asia
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