The News Minute | July 31, 2014 | 10:46 am IST
A decade after a fire in a school in Kumbakonam killed 94 students, the Thanjavur district principal sessions court on Wednesday convicted 10 people and sentenced them to rigorous imprisonment.
The convicted include the founder of Krishna English Medium School, Pulavar Palanichamy, his wife and school correspondent Saraswati, headmistress Santhanalakshmi, chartered engineer Jayachandran, elementary education officer Balaji, assistant elementary education officer Sivaprakasam and PA to elementary education officer Thandavan- all of them have been sentenced to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment along with paying Rs 47 lakh in fine.
However, the verdict has far from given any sense of justice to the parents of the children who had lost their lives in the tragedy. Of the 21 people accused in the case, the court acquitted 11 of them- three school teachers and eight government officials.
Parents have expressed shock at the verdict that acquitted 11 of the accused. They have, thus, decided to appeal against the court’s verdict in the case and will demand conviction of all the 21 accused, states a report in The Times of India (TOI).
The day the fire broke out in the school, the teachers had allegedly moved Tamil-medium students to an English medium classroom in order to show an inflated number of students to an ensuing education department probe.It is also alleged that the teachers locked up the students in a room and went to a temple, as it was Aadi Friday, an auspicious day in the Tamil calendar.
An email doing the rounds of one of the disappointed parents reads, ‘The teacher who went to worship Devi temple on the auspicious day (Aadi Friday) after locking the KG classes preventing the children to escape from the fire, should also be punished. They are the real culprits and they have to be punished severely.’
PMK Chief S Ramadoss also expressed his shock and dismay at the verdict saying that the punishment given to the guilty was not enough.
Another TOI report quotes Ramadoss, in a statement issued by him, as asking "Even the Justice Sampath Commission which probed the fire accident had blamed the laxity of officials in granting permission to a school which had more than 900 students. Have they been acquitted due to lack of proper arguments put forth by the government".
(Image courtesy: Puthiya Thalaimurai TV )
The fire
On July 16, 2004, a fire broke out in Krishna English Medium School in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, killing 94 students. The fire is said to have erupted in the school’s noon meal centre on the first floor of the building in a thatched room. The Tamil Nadu government has built a memorial park in memory of the children who lost their lives to the fire in the school.