"Teacher Pretended Nobody Was Missing": Parents Of Girl Who Jumped To Death

Get the teacher arrested at least, Shivani Meena, the grieving mother of Amaira, a class 4 student who fell from the fourth floor of her school building late last year, beseeched NDTV on Friday after fresh CCTV footage reopened the debate around the death of the nine-year-old student in Jaipur.

Shivani Meena underscored that her daughter was very happy when she arrived at the school that November morning.

Read: Bullying, Call For Help: CCTV Shows Moments Before Jaipur Schoolgirl's Death

"Amaira was very happy, she welcomed her friend into the classroom. She was the first one to reach in her class. She greeted her friend with open arms. She took one golgappa out of her bag, ate that golgappa. She was chatting with her friends. After that she went for a dance session for nearly one hour and twenty minutes. She was dancing with all the energy. After that the bullying started at 11 am," Shivani Meena told NDTV.

The father too underlined that Amaira was happy when she arrived at the school.

"The child went to school in the morning happy, was dancing for an hour - meaning she was completely normal. Then the situation changes - a digital slate is brought out, the children start troubling her, bullying her, the class is going on, two teachers are present, yet despite that the child goes up five times with her complaint," father Vijay Meena said.

"The teacher also threatened her, and that thing was further escalated. So we have been demanding from the very beginning that this constitutes a case of abetment to suicide against the class teacher, who could easily have stopped this situation, but she didn't stop it," he added. 

Amaira's mother claimed that her daughter was bullied by a boy for a full 55 minutes, and the teacher did nothing to save her.

"It started with the boy who was sitting in front of Amaira. Amaira was continuously telling him to look forward, to look at the board. She was a disciplined child. She was on her seat, not moving or complaining. After 55 minutes of bullying, she went to the teacher. You can see there is a gesture like this (mimics with folded hands) ma'am, ma'am. It needs a lot of courage, a lot of courage to approach the class teacher five times. Not once, five times. Five times she went to the teacher to explain. She kept saying ma'am I did not do this. I did not say this ma'am. No ma'am, no," Shivani said.

"The teacher cornered her, she participated in that bullying. This is wilful neglect by the teacher's side. Amaira was showing all the alarming signs, putting her hands on her forehead, this means the child is going through something immense, something very painful she is seeing on the digital slate," she said, adding that she did not know that digital slates were being used in the class.

She claimed that the teacher was busy shopping on the digital device.

"We also saw in the footage (CCTV) that the teacher was scrolling this digital slate. The teacher was also allowed in the classroom to use her mobile phone and to shop on the website. We have the visuals, we can share it with you as well if you want that she is shopping on the website," the mother claimed.

The mother said that when Amaira left the class, no one bothered to follow her.

"She went to the teacher five times. Her trust, her spirit was broken by Mrs Punita Sharma. The way she (Amaira) walked out from the class, you can see she was walking very fiercely and walking very fast. She closed the door. No one followed her when she walked out of the class. There were children. No one followed her. No one bothered," the mother complained.

"At 12:28 pm, Amaira jumped from the fourth floor of the school building, and four minutes later, at 12:32 pm, when the teacher was told about it, she "started checking her notebooks", the mother claimed.

"She was inside the class, she didn't go out for 50 minutes," the father said.

"There was no information about Amaira for another 50 minutes. They could not identify the child. The school could not identify the child. Because the teacher kept pretending that there was no one missing from the class," the mother said.

The family claims they received a call from the school at 1:08 pm.

"At 1 o'clock, this teacher (Punita Sharma) reported to the principal that there is one child missing from the classroom, which is Amaira. Then at 1.08 pm, they called my husband asking him to come to this hospital, saying she (Amaira) is a little bit hurt," the mother said.

Upon arriving at the hospital, the parents claimed that no one from the school was present there.

"We reached there in the next 8 to 9 minutes. There was nobody from the school. We were told by the hospital management that they (school authorities) left the child on the stretcher and they ran away. There was nobody from the school to inform us," the mother claimed.

The aggrieved mother implored that the teacher be arrested.

"We appeal through your medium to the police authorities, to everybody that kindly arrest the teacher at least. We want abetment to suicide charge to be levied against Mrs Punita Sharma. This is absolutely a failure by the teacher," the mother claimed.

"It is wilful neglect," the father joined in.

The mother repeated the same.

"Wilful neglect is also there by the teacher. Total institutional bullying is happening inside the class. It is a total failure of the school to manage that, to prevent that situation. We want stricter action against the school principal. Only negligence is not the section which should be applied against her," the mother said.

When asked if Amaira ever mentioned being bullied at school, the father answered in the affirmative.

"Amaira had 3 to 4 incidents in 1.5 years. Every time Amaira told us something, like there was an incident of the middle finger, we gave complaints to the class teacher, to the coordinator. We just wanted to hear from the school that they will see to it. But nothing happened. We tried to change the school," the father said.

The parents also spoke about the harassment that they have faced in the last eight months.

"They were saying there was no negligence in this case. They wanted to close this case," the mother said.

The husband backed his wife's charge.

"The Commissioner told us that there's no criminal angle in this case," he said.

The wife agreed.

"There's no criminal angle. Your child must be upset because of something else," the wife said, quoting a police officer.

"Then we filed an appeal in the high court," the father said, adding that the investigating officer was changed thrice in these eight months.

What do you want now? NDTV asked the couple. Closure, they said.

"We really wanted closure. We wanted to know what had happened to her. What were the last words which she faced? What kind of humiliation she went through? We really want to know as a parent. This will be our closure. We are looking for this kind of closure now," the mother said.