Bedrabad Baisnabnagar High School is located under the jurisdiction of Kaliachak police station in Malda district of West Bengal. On 9th September a group of students attacked its headmaster Mr Obaidur Rahman (age 50) for reportedly abusing and attempting to molest Ms Aparna Singha (age 35) who is also a teacher of the same school. The event started on 4thSeptember when Ms Singha was asked to visit the headmaster’s chamber. During the interaction, she alleged that Mr Rahman abused her verbally in sexually explicit languages and then attempted to molest her while she pleaded to be left alone. Although she could not leave initially, the headmaster relented eventually and allowed her to leave. After this, she rushed to the teacher’s room and informed her female colleagues of the torment. She was asked to remain silent for the time being. But her colleagues’ best efforts to suppress the incident failed and reports of Aparna’s attempted molestation spread across the neighborhood.
Not only did this become the talk of the town, a lot of folks found the incident obnoxious and worthy of protest. Some were even found to describe the event as “enough is enough.” Following the event, the headmaster remained absent for the following three days while Aparna continued to go to school. Then on 9th September while the school started as usual, Obadiur Rahman asked Aparna Singha to visit his chamber again apparently to settle the crisis. However, during the interaction he grabbed one hand of Aprana and reportedly tried to molest her again. Somehow, she managed to save herself and ran to the teacher’s room. The latest set of assault enraged all and then a large number of students barged into the headmaster’s chamber to protest the harassment of Ms Singha. A heated argument ensued and once the headmaster refused to listen to them, students in throngs attacked him.
Obadiur Rahman was manhandled, beaten heavily leading to a pandemonium and the school was then closed. Police officials and other responsible persons of local administration promptly visited the school. Ramkrishna Mandal, secretary of Baisnabnagar High School, also visited the spot and soon got engaged with police and administrative officials to find a solution and normalize things. Following the incident, the injured headmaster was sent to the local primary health centre and then referred to the district hospital for treatment.
Nevertheless, both Prasenjit Das, president of Trinamool Congress of Malda District, and Kalyan Mukherjee, Superintendent of Police – Malda, were found to be more interested to conceal offense of the school headmaster. While Prasenjit was found to reprimand students stating that they had a predetermined strategy to create lawlessness in the school and in its environs, SP was found to blame outsiders to create chaos.