Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Oct 24:
The Odisha government today shifted the headmistress of the high school of which four students of class IX had drowned to death in a canal on the outskirts of the city on Tuesday.
School and Mass Education minister Debi Prasad Mishra informed that Bijayalakshmi Mohanty, the headmistress of the Rail Vihar government high school has been transferred for not informing the guardians of the students about the order barring them from entering the school premises for 15 days for an act of indiscipline.
He said the action against the teacher has been taken in accordance with the suggestions of the inquiry committee report.
Mishra said the government is going to come out with a set of guidelines for students of class IX and X very soon.
Four class IX students of the Government High School at Rail Vihar in Chandrasekharpur in Bhubaneswar had drowned in the Barang-Puri main canal on Tuesday while taking bath.
Fourteen class IX students of Government High School at Rail Vihar in Chandrasekharpur in Bhubaneswar had skipped school on Tuesday and had gone to Barang on the outskirts of the capital city.
While in the area, they decided to take a bath in the Barang –Puri main canal that proved fatal for four of them.
Four students had jumped into the canal to rescue a friend whose feet had slipped while he was bathing. Though one of them was rescued, four others were swept away by the strong current in the canal.
The School and Mass Education minister had ordered for an inquiry by a joint team comprising of the Khordha district administration and the School and Mass Education department to find out the circumstances that lead to the tragic incident.
The Khordha sub-collector and district education officer had conducted the inquiry and submitted the report to the government.
Some students and guardians had alleged that some students had been asked by a school teacher to stop coming to school for fifteen days as a punishment after they were found playing during school time.
The inquiry committee, during its probe, found out that the school authorities did not give any written order to the students not to attend school, nor did they report the non-attendance of the students to their guardians.
The inquiry report had cited ‘communication gap’ between school authorities and guardians
The tragedy occured because all the students did not know how to swim.