Tutor injures five-year-old with hot iron ladle in Howrah, arrested

Suchandra Kumari, the tutor, told police that she was exasperated with the boy, who wouldn’t study despite several attempts to make him do so. She said she just wanted to give him a light punishment.

Howrah Police have arrested a private tutor for allegedly scalding a five-year-old boy with a hot iron ladle, causing severe injuries on his arms and feet.

The boy, a student of KG II, an English medium school on Belilious Road, is a neighbour of the tutor. (Representative photo)

Suchandra Kumari, the tutor, told police that she was exasperated with the boy, who wouldn’t study despite several attempts to make him do so. She just wanted to give him a light punishment. “She claimed that she did not know that the ladle was hot,” a police officer said, requesting anonymity.

The boy, a student of KG II, an English medium school on Belilious Road, is a neighbour of the tutor.

The incident happened on Thursday afternoon, three days after a court in Bengal’s Bidhannagar sent another private tutor to six months’ jail for beating a three-and-a-half-year-old boy.

A video of that incident went viral in the last week of July 2014, where the tutor Pooja Singh was seen kicking the child in the chest at least twice, hurling him head first on the bed and punching him on the face indiscriminately even as the kid screamed and wanted to go back to his mother.

“She (Kumari) asked questions that my son failed to answer. Then she hit him,” the boy’s mother told the media.

Suchandra, who is in her early twenties, has been charged with sections 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means) of IPC.