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Roti, salt video: Villagers stop sending kids to school, seek withdrawal of case against scribe
Villagers on Thursday decided not to send their children to Shiur primary school in Mirzapur district, where salt and roti was served to students as mid-day meal
Villagers on Thursday decided not to send their children to Shiur primary school in Mirzapur district, where salt and roti was served to students as mid-day meal last month. They said they would continue the boycott till the case registered against a journalist, Pawan Jaiswal, and Rajkumar Pal, a representative of the village head, were withdrawn.
As villagers began the boycott, only one child reached the primary school on Thursday. The school has been in the new ever since a video showing roti (chapattis) and salt being served to children as mid-day meal on August 22 went viral on the social media. Jaiswal had exposed the substandard mid-day meal at the primary school by making the video.
A parent, who did not wish to be identified, said, “The village head’s representative Rajkumar Pal and journalist Pawan Jaiswal have been implicated. Registering a police case against them is wrong. We will not send our children to the school until the case against the representative and the journalist is withdrawn.”
There are 100 children enrolled in the primary school from class 1 to 5, according to a teacher of the primary school. The school time is 8am-1pm.
Teachers Vinod Yadav, Awadhesh Kumar, Shivanand Srivastava and shiksha mitra Shanti Devi reached the school around 8am. But they were surprised as only one class 1 student reached the school by then. The teachers said that they did their duty and kept sitting in vacant classrooms.
One of the teachers said, “We reached the school on time at 8am. But there was only child present in the school. We waited for the (other) children till 10am. When none of the (other) children turned up, mid-day meal was cooked for only one child and was served to him.”
Another resident of Shiur village asked, “What is the fault of Rajkumar Pal and why has he been arrested? Why was a case registered against the journalist who brought forth the reality?”
The locals said they would continue their protest in support of the journalist and the village head’s representative.
Mirzapur chief development officer Priyanka Niranjan said that when she came to know about the matter, she asked the teachers as to why the children didn’t attend school.
“The teachers informed me that Rajkumar Pal’s brother spread a rumour among the locals that some people were roaming around schools and may harm children, if they went to school. That is why parents didn’t send their children to school,” she said.
The CDO said the teachers went door to door, met parents to allay their fears and appealed them to send the children to the school. The children will attend school on Friday, the officer said.
On August 22, salt and roti was allegedly served to children at the government primary school in Shiur. After a video of the incident went viral, the district administration ordered a probe and took action against four officials and suspended school head master Radha Gupt. Later, a case was registered with police against Pal and Jaiswal on Sunday. Pal was arrested on Monday.
The police lodged the case on Monday against Jaiswal and Pal for allegedly ‘conspiring and deliberately recording the video in a well-planned manner to malign the state government’.Jaiswal and Pal were booked under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 186 (obstructing public servant in discharging duty), 193 (false evidence) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, the police had said.
