Bihar Schoolgirls Beaten for Confronting Sexual HarassersTop Stories

October 09, 2018 12:06
Bihar Schoolgirls Beaten for Confronting Sexual Harassers

(Image source from: MSN.com)

After 34 girls were violently attacked by a mob for fighting off sexual harassers in Bihar state, campaigners are calling to protect girls in state-run institutions who are at peril of sexual assault and hostility.

A resident school for girls Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, in Supaul district, witnessed chaotic scenes on Saturday after some girls objected to sexual advances and obscene messages from a group of boys.

A mob including the boys and their parents later entered the school where they beat and injured scores of girls aged amid 12 and 14.

"The girls were playing inside the school compound when some boys came in and tried to sexually harass them. The girls fought them off and there was an altercation. A mob then gathered with the boys' parents who beat up the girls," Jagatpati Chaudhury, the District Education Officer in Supaul, told Al Jazeera.

"The girls were injured, shocked, in trauma and were rushed to the hospital. These were scenes of havoc as most of the girls are in sixth and seventh grades."

"They were beating up all the girls. They tore our clothes and took away our dupattas (scarves)," said a young girl who was sobbing at the hospital.

Police say they have arrested two people and detained four in connection with the incident.

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District magistrate Baidyanath Yadav said local boys used to write lewd messages on the school walls. Local media reports suggest the girls at the school were routinely harassed.

The Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya is a government-run special school that provides residential elementary education to girls belonging to India's most vulnerable communities: scheduled tribes, scheduled castes, religious minorities and families living below the poverty line across India.

Activists remark that the state and the community have been abortive to protect girls in such schools, which were established in places where female rural literacy rates are debased.

"This case is especially alarming because it happened at a school. It has been an uphill task to get girls from marginalized communities into schools. In rural Bihar, projects to get adolescent girls on self-defense training programs have worked very well. So this violent attack is a setback," Prabhat Kumar, head of child protection at the charity Save the Children in India, told Al Jazeera.

"Shockingly, when the boys came back to attack the girls, they were with their parents. Adults not guiding their children and the community not preventing such attacks is shocking and disheartening," he added.

According to the Non-Governmental Organization, Child Rights, a child is sexually abused every 15 minutes in India.

-Sowmya Sangam

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