Badlapur sexual assaults case: POCSO court refuses pre-arrest bail to school trustees

The trustees were denied bail after the investigating officer in the case said the police had found evidence of negligence by the school

THANE: A special POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) court in Kalyan on Tuesday denied anticipatory bail to two trustees of the Badlapur school where two four-year-old girls were sexually assaulted allegedly by a cleaning staff. The trustees were denied bail after the investigating officer in the case said the police had found evidence of negligence by the school.

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Trust president Uday Kotwal and secretary Tushar Apte were named as accused in one of the two POCSO cases registered at the Badlapur police station in connection with the incident. They were booked under sections 65(2), 74, 75 and 76 of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita and sections 2, 4, 8, 10 and 21 of the POCSO Act, 2012, for failing to report the incident to the police as per provisions of the POCSO Act.

Kotwal and Apte approached the Kalyan sessions court on August 30 seeking pre-arrest bail. They claimed they had taken prompt action upon learning of the sexual assaults and therefore should not be forced to face the charges.

The court then requested the investigating officer to clarify their role. After the officer reported that the police had found evidence of negligence by the school, the court rejected their applications for anticipatory bail.

The trustees now plan to approach the Bombay high court for relief.

The Badlapur police had on August 16 booked a 24-year-old man employed as a cleaner at the school for sexually assaulting the two four-year-old kindergarten girls. The cleaner had been hired by the school trustees 15 days prior to the incident, without conducting a background check.

When the girls’ parents informed the school authorities about the incident, they initially denied the same, saying no such incident could have taken place on the school premises. The police too delayed the process of registering the FIR, which had sparked widespread protests outside the school and on the railway tracks at Badlapur station.