Karnataka HC seeks report on Bidar cops questioning kids

The division bench headed by Chief Justice Abhay Sreenivas Oka directed the state advocate general’s office to “take instructions whether school-going children are being interrogated by the police in uniform’’ in connection with the Shaheen Primary School sedition case registered on January 26.

The petition has sought compensation for the children, who were randomly selected and questioned by the police, and sought HC’s directives to police on rules of conducting investigations in cases involving children.

Following an inquiry into the questioning of children by the police, and the arrest of the widowed mother of a Class V student, in the sedition case, the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) pulled up the Bidar police. The Commission’s chairman, Dr Antony Sebastian, sent a letter to Bidar district officials on February 6, with copies marked to the Karnataka DGP, stating that rights of children were violated and an “atmosphere of fear’’ was created at the school by the police investigation.

“After interactions with parents, school officials, children and the police, and after studying photographs and CCTV footage, it is clear that the police violated rights of children at the school,’’ Sebastian, a qualified juvenile justice advocate, said. “We have seen from pictures of the questioning of children that some policemen were present in uniform in violation of the law while some policemen were in civil clothes. When the children were being questioned their parents or guardians should have been present. There have been violations of child rights,’’ he said.

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The child rights official said that many children had stopped going to school after the police began questioning children.

School headmistress Fareeda Begum and Najumnissa, mother of a Class V student, were arrested on January 30 as part of police investigations into a complaint filed on January 26 by a local ABVP activist Nilesh Rakshyal against the play staged in the school.