The principal of a government-aided Muslim school has been arrested for sexual harassment. His wife and the school Correspondent have also been booked under POCSO for aiding him. The victims were Muslim girls and the principal was arrested only after they sat in protest and Muslim outfits joined them.
Three 12th grade girls studying in the Muslim Girls Higher Secondary school in Melapalayam, Tirunelveli, were sexually harassed by the principal. It is reported that they came late to school one day and the principal took them to his office on the pretext of admonishing them. He sexually harassed them there and on another occasion as well.
A Tamil media report about the incident says that he feigned ache in his hands and asked the girls to massage them and sexually harassed the girls. The girls staged an in-house agitation and their parents joined them upon hearing the news. Other parents and Muslim outfits also reached the school and escalated the protest seeking immediate arrest of the principal.
Police officials and the district administration had to intervene and placate the parents assuring immediate action. A formal complaint was filed and Principal Qutb ud-din Najeeb, his wife Mohideen Fatima and Correspondent Kadar Ammal were booked under the POCSO Act. Qutb ud-din was arrested the same night and lodged in prison. Melapalayam is a Muslim-majority area and most of the students would be Muslim girls. But the minority institution tag doesn’t stop them from admitting Hindu children who could have been victims of the sexual predator as much as the Muslim girls.
Islamic outfits, especially the radical ones like PFI and SDPI, have been vehemently fighting for hijab, burqa and other Islamic outfits to be allowed in educational institutions even as an originally Islamic country like Iran is fighting against it. Yet, in a conservative Muslim school totally run by Muslims, Muslim girls wearing these Islamic outfits to safeguard their dignity are sexually harassed.
Except for Nakheeran, a digital magazine, no other media mentioned the fact that the school is subsidised by the government. As a minority school, the concerned school is exempted from the RTE Act and is eligible for the discriminatory Infrastructure Development in Minority Institutes(IDMI) scheme as well. Through the IDMI scheme, minority institutions can avail Rs.50 lakh or 75% of the total estimate if they want to expand the infrastructure. If it were a Hindu-run institution, Dravidianists and liberals would have descended on Hindus with contempt, terming it as an RSS, BJP, and Hindutva ideological crime.
When PSBB, a school run by Brahmins in Chennai, was in the news when one of their teachers sexually harassed students, and when the same happened in Chinmaya Vidyalaya in Coimbatore, media and Dravidianists dragged them through mud just for teaching Sanatani values.
