A boy the school locked up, forgot

Sitting on the last bench of his school during the last period on Wednesday, six-year-old Mustakeem Ahmed fell asleep. When he woke he found all the others gone, while he had been locked inside, reports Neelam Pandey.

Sitting on the last bench of his school during the last period on Wednesday, six-year-old Mustakeem Ahmed fell asleep. When he woke he found all the others gone, while he had been locked inside.

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A Class II student at a municipal school in Bijwasan, Musta-keem banged on the door and howled for help — to no avail. He was found, hungry and desperate, sitting on a window sill of his class, only when school reopened the next morning.

Had the next day been a weekend or a holiday, he could well have starved to death.

Following the incident, the school principal, Mustakeem’s class teacher and the school security guard have all been suspended. “The class teacher is responsible,” said Prithvi Raj Sawhney, chairman on the MCD’s education committee. “Teachers are supposed to inspect classrooms thoroughly after the children have left.”

“Our son usually returns home around 6.45 pm,” said Mustakeem’s father, Jaleel Ahmed, a scrap dealer. “When he didn’t come till 8 pm we started looking for him. We registered a missing complaint. We went to search the school, but it was locked and deserted.”

Mustakeem was found on Thursday morning when the school reopened. He is too sacred to go back to school now. "I cried for help all night I had nothing to eat,” he said.