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Police action on Bidar school students in violation of juvenile justice Act: Karnataka HC
Bengaluru The Karnataka high court on Monday observed that the police action against students of Shaheen School in Bidar, which included interrogation by weapon-carrying and uniformed law enforcement authorities, amounted to a violation of the Juvenile Justice Act
Bengaluru
The Karnataka high court on Monday observed that the police action against students of Shaheen School in Bidar, which included interrogation by weapon-carrying and uniformed law enforcement authorities, amounted to a violation of the Juvenile Justice Act.
Basava Prasad Kunale, the advocate on record of the petitioners, told HT on Monday that the interrogation of the school students by uniformed policemen was challenged as only a special officer can do this when any child is in conflict with the law.
“The reason (for HC to call it a violation of juvenile justice act) is that the investigating officer himself admits in his affidavit that they went to the school with police uniforms. So since they are admitting it, it is clearly in violation of the Juvenile justice act. It says that the interrogation has to be by the special officer,” Kunale said.
A division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Oka and Justice NS Sanjay Gowda on Monday asked concerned higher officials to submit an affidavit on what action they will take against the police officials who interrogated these children.
“It (HC) has also directed the state government to come up with guidelines so that those guidelines in the future will be a law for the police, whenever they are interrogating children,” according to the advocates on record for the petitioners.
The students of the 4th, 5th and 6th grade of Shaheen School were subjected to interrogation after a local Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activist, Neelesh Rakshyal, on 26 January 2020 filed a case against the school authorities over organising a play ‘Hum Kaghaz Nahin Dikhayenge’ (We will not show our document), a popular poem penned by comedian Varun Grover, that allegedly portrayed Prime Minister Narendra Modi in poor light, on January 21.
One parent’s decision to stream the play on a social media platform exposed the school to intense scrutiny in the border district, about 676 kms from Bengaluru.
Rakshyal had alleged that the head of the school had performed anti-national activities by spreading negative opinion about the Parliament’s laws among the students, spreading communal tension and inciting the public to oppose the legislation.
The charges of sedition against the school authorities, arrest of two people (a parent and teacher) and the interrogation of students no older than 12 sitting scared on the floor when police questioned them, made national headlines last year.
