Chandigarh: Haryana Police on Monday arrested the school principal and a driver on charges of assaulting a Class 2 student of a private primary school in Panipat town and tying him upside down with a window. 

The seven-year-old allegedly suffered physical abuse at the hands of the school bus driver at Srijan Public School.

The child was seen tied upside down to a window, and the bus driver was seen beating him up. In another video, the school principal can be seen slapping two students continuously and pulling a student’s ears in front of their classmates.

Panipat Deputy Superintendent of Police Satish Vats told the media that the principal and the driver have been arrested.

He said the incident took place on August 13 and the victim’s family came to know about the crime on September 27, after the bus driver shared a video on social media in which the boy was seen tied upside down with a window.

The school principal, Reena and bus driver Ajay have been booked under sections 115 (voluntarily causing hurt), 127(2) (wrongful confinement), 351(2) (criminal intimidation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Act and Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act.

On being asked about taking the law into her hands, the principal told the police that they were slapped for misbehaving with two sisters, and she had apprised their parents about the incident the same day.

The principal admitted she had called the driver to scold the student for not completing the homework, but she got to know about the corporal punishment after his parents visited the school on Saturday and raised the issue.

She claimed that when she came to know that driver Ajay behaved inappropriately with the child, whose legs were tied with a rope and was hung from the window in a school uniform, she had terminated him from service on August 30. However, some parents alleged the principal used to ask students to clean the floor of the classroom and toilets as corporal punishment.

(IANS)