Kerala pupils expelled for hug: Students’ union to march to St Thomas School in protest

The Thiruvananthapuram district unit of the Kerala Students Union (KSU), the Congress affiliated students’ union, will take out a march to St Thomas Central School on January 3 in protest against the expulsion of two of its students for a congratulatory hug during an Arts festival. 

As many as 500 students representing the district unit of the organisation will take part in the protest demanding that the students be taken back and allowed to write their exams.

“A congratulatory hug could be a sign of friendship; the fault lies in the eyes of the school authorities who found something wrong in the act. No other school should repeat this,” Nabeel Kallambalam, KSU state general secretary, told TNM.

Nabeel said that the union would also appeal to senior Congress leaders to intervene in the issue and talk to the CBSE to allow the students to write the exam.

“Not only St Thomas, but all the schools run by private managements are doing the same… suppressing students’ freedom in an ugly way. By doing so, they subject the students to harassment which in turn would make them mentally unhealthy,” he said.

The News Minute on December 15 broke the story of two students expelled from St Thomas Central School in Thiruvananthapuram after a boy was found giving his friend a congratulatory hug during the Arts festival in the school. The management also decided to hack the private Instagram accounts of the students, the boy from Class 12 and girl from Class 11, to collect evidence against them.

The school calling the hug ‘indecent, scandalous and an undisciplined public display of affection’, asked the students not to attend classes from July 21, 2017.

Later, coming as an impact of TNM’s story, the school authorities wrote a letter asking the CBSE to allow the boy to write his exams. Shashi Tharoor, Thiruvananthapuram MP, had taken an interest in the case and spoken to the school management, which made the school soften its stand.

Regarding the girl student, the school authorities took the stand that she was not officially their student as she had studied only a few days in the school and not submitted her TC from the previous school.