A government school teacher has been arrested in Maharashtra’s Akola district for allegedly molesting six school girls.
According to ANI, the accused, Pramod Manohar Sardar, 47, is a teacher at the Zilla Parishad School in Kajikhed. After the Akola police received a complaint, they arrested the teacher and recorded the statements of the six victims, Superintendent of Police (Akola), Bachchan Singh said.
An India Today report said the accused allegedly showed pornographic content to the students and sexually abused them for months. The incident came to light after the students complained about the teacher to their parents. A student also reported the incident on the child helpline at 1098, which brought the matter to the notice of the local Child Welfare Committee, India Today reported.
Following the complaint, child welfare officials went to the school to investigate the matter. The teacher was subsequently taken into custody and an FIR was registered against him. Citing case details, India Today reported that the accused would show the six students videos and also abuse them. In the FIR, the students stated that the teacher had been doing so for the past four months.
Badlapur Protests Over Child Rape
The news comes as thousands of protesters blocked railway tracks at Badlapur station in Thane district on Tuesday and stormed a local school building following the alleged sexual assault of two four-year-old girls by the school sweeper in the washroom.
Police cane-charged the protesters, who occupied the railway tracks and pelted police personnel with stones. Hundreds of protesters, many of them angry parents, vandalised the school building.
The school management has suspended the principal, a class teacher, and a female attendant over the incident. The state government on Tuesday ordered the suspension of three police officials, including a senior police inspector, for alleged dereliction of duty in probing the sexual abuse of the two girls.