A teacher at St. Xavier School in Nerul was on Saturday booked on the charges of defamation and atrocity based on a parent’s complaint.
According to the complainant, his elder daughter studies at Class IX in the school. From the time she was in Class I, he had been paying the fees in right time, but in view of COVID-19, he could not pay the fees for academic year 2019-2020, he claimed.
One of the teachers, the complaint said, made a PDF file claiming that his daughter was a defaulter and circulated it to students on WhatsApp in March. The complainant claimed that instead of personally sending a message to him, the teacher concerned sent it to the girl’s friends from whom she later learnt about the PDF file. His daughter who felt insulted by the incident went into depression, he said.
The complainant further claimed that once he had had an argument with the school management that they should have Savitribai Phule’s photo in the entrance instead of an idol of goddess Saraswati. “Keeping a grudge over the incident and knowing that I belonged to a lower caste, the school had purposefully planned to insult me,” the complaint said.
Shyam Shinde, senior police inspector, Nerul police station, said, “As per the allegation, we have registered a case and are investigating. No arrest has been made.”