By IANS,
New Delhi: Union Women and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath Tuesday termed, as a criminal offence, the incident where a school hostel warden of West Bengal’s Visva Bharati campus allegedly forced a girl student to drink her own urine as punishment for bed-wetting.
“The incident should be considered as a criminal offence,” she told a TV channel.
The incident happened Saturday when Uma Poddar, the warden of Karabi hostel of university’s school Patha Bhavan, found Punita guilty of bed-wetting. She allegedly then made the girl drink her urine as a punishment.
The minister also condemned the arrest of the parents.
“Arresting them (parents) was wrong. What is their mistake ? They went their immediately to see their child as they came to know about such a shocking incident through media. They had just come to protect their child, to arrest them was not correct,” she said.
The warden was arrested Monday morning following a complaint by the parents of the girl who was allegedly made to drink her urine. As she was booked under bailable offences, she has been granted bail by the court.
The parents were also released on bail.
The incident also came to the notice of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), which sought a report and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights sent a notice to the West Bengal government asking it to investigate the matter and submit a report within 10 days.
Visva-Bharati was founded by India’s first Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore and in his own words, the institution “acknowledges India’s obligation to offer to others the hospitality of her best culture and India’s right to accept from others their best”.