A 34-year-old woman teacher (a mother of two girls aged 10 and eight years old) was arrested in Chandigarh on May 25 for allegedly sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy who was taking tuition from her.
“We have registered a case under Section 6 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act,” confirmed Chandigarh senior superintendent of police Nilambari Vijay Jagdale.
A government school science teacher and the 15-year-old victim were neighbours at Ram Darbar colony in Sector 31, Chandigarh. Their families know each other well. The boy and his younger sister started taking tuitions from the woman in September 2017.
According to the police, the boy’s parents had a confrontation with the teacher on May 21 and on May 23 and which they contacted Childline, a 24-hour, toll-free telephone helpline service for children in distress and were guided to lodge a complaint with the police.
Dr Sangeeta Jund, the project director of Childline, Chandigarh, said, “The teacher requested the boy’s parents to send their daughter to for tuition separately so that she could ‘focus’ on their son.”
She added, “The parents agreed but on the pretext of imparting him knowledge, she started luring the boy physically in the beginning of 2018. She also gave him a SIM card to him to stay in touch with her.”
When we counselled the boy (victim) we realised that the teacher was not only aggressive with him but was also extremely possessive about him. As he slowly opened up to our counsellors, he gave details of the abuse he was facing.
The case came to light on May 22 when the parents approached the tuition teacher to cancel the tuition classes as their boy’s grades were not improving at all. Following this, the teacher became abusive with the parents and locked up the boy in a room. But parents managed to free the boy with the help of some neighbours and took him home.
The teacher was not able to control the situation and she went to their home and drank a lot of cough syrup there. The parents then called up the police and the teacher was hospitalized.
The teacher was produced before a local court on 25 May, after that she was remanded in judicial custody.
