Though democracy is an ideal form of governance, still the citizens living in a democracy can not take it for granted and they cannot remain rest assured that their rights are guaranteed, despite the existence and functioning of legislature, executive, judiciary and the press as the four pillars of democracy.
While any citizen living in a democracy is vulnerable, the children are no exception.
Recently, in Shanthiniketan, a famous educational institution established by Rabindranath Tagore in Kolkatta, the rough handling of a girl child by the hostel warden demanded juvenile justice.
The girl child was just ten years old and an inmate of the hostel. When she committed bed wetting, the hostel warden punished her rather cruelly and unusually. She ordered the girl child to drink her own urine. Another complaint says that the teacher ordered the girl child to lick the bed which she had bed wetted.
Due to the cruel punishment meted out to her, the girl child fell ill. When the parents of the girl child came to know about the ill-treatment meted out to their daughter, they got infuriated and rushed to the school only to attack the hostel warden for her reckless behavior and inhuman treatment of their daughter. Going a step further, the girl child’s parents preferred a complaint in the police station against the school warden. The school authorities in turn filed a complaint against the parents of the girl child. The police arrested both the teacher and the parents of the child and later they were let off on bail.
When the above case came up for trial, the trial judge blamed the police authorities for framing only mild charges under the sections of Indian Penal Code against the accused and also questioned why the police authorities did not book her under the Juvenile Justice Act.
Whatever must be the verdict of the above case, it is a pathetic case. It is hard to understand, how a women (the hostel warden) failed to understand that bed wetting is quite natural and that too in the case of girl children, each girl child might have her own physical problems for such bed wetting. Even matured adult and aged people too have the habit of bed wetting. In fact, bed wetting is a kind of ailment that requires a medical treatment from a specialist. It is quite disgusting that such haughty and imperious teachers were not aware of it.
However, an injustice has been meted out to the hapless girl child that committed no crime but only bed wetting.Hence, the child's case should be dealt with under the appropriate provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act and it should serve as a lesson to other ignorant people.
