Functional Bengal school building demolished, administration clueless

The building of a functional government primary school in West Bengal’s Malda district has been demolished, while the administration is clueless over who conducted it.

The incident took place in English Bazar town on December 1 but came to light recently, police said on Friday.

An FIR has been lodged with the English Bazar police station by the District Primary School Council for vandalism of public property by unknown persons, its inspector-in-charge Madan Mohan Roy said, adding an investigation is underway.

Locals had initially thought that the old building of the school, established in 1969, was demolished to construct a new one but when that did not turn out to be the case, they informed the school teachers about it, resident Mohammad Salim said.

While District Inspector of Primary Schools, Suniti Sapui, refused to talk to the media about the incident, Sadar Sub-divisional Officer Suresh Chandra Rano said that the building was demolished by unknown persons bypassing government procedures.

“A government building cannot be demolished without the permission of the administration. If a building is in a dilapidated condition, an engineer inspects its structure and then a decision is taken whether to tear it down. But in this case, no government procedure was followed,” he said.