Education News

Indian teacher tells children to fetch liquor, dance

Jan 30, 2012, 8:05 GMT

New Delhi - A teacher in central India was suspended after he told a student to fetch liquor for him and forced a group of girls to dance in a locked room, news reports said Monday.

The incident came to light when 30 students and their parents lodged a complaint with a government official in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh state, the Times of India newspaper reported.

The students from Deochowki village said the teacher gave a 10-year-old boy some money and told him to fetch a bottle of liquor from a shop on Thursday, India's Republic Day said.

The teacher then poured a drink, locked the door of the classroom and told a group of girls aged between 7 and 11 to dance for him, the complaint said.

The teacher allegedly caned the students if they stopped dancing. The children told Betul district collector Chandrashekhar Bora that they climbed out of a window and escaped.

Bora said the teacher had been suspended and an inquiry ordered. There had been complaints against the teacher in another school where he had worked earlier, the report said citing officials.

The teacher denied the charges, saying he had sent the boy to fetch petrol in an empty bottle and that he made the girls dance as practice for a cultural programme on Republic Day.

'Parents are anyway wary of sending girl children to school. The drop out rates are very high and incidents like these do not help,' women's rights activist Ranjana Kumari said.