La Martinere suicide: CNI questions child rights commission's impartiality in probe

The Church of North India, which runs the La Martinere School for Boys, has raised questions about the impartiality of the probe by National Commission for Protection of Child Rights into the Rauvanjit Rawla suicide case, saying it had been done with a "pre-conceived notion".

"The CNI strongly questions the role of the NCPCR probe team as the way they conducted the investigations makes it clear that they were working with a pre-conceived notion and that they were not impartial," executive committee member of the CNI Synod and the Kolkata Diocese Suman Biswas charged.

Rouvanit, a Class VIII student, committed suicide on February 12, four days after being caned by principal Sunirmal Chakravarthy for errant behaviour.

Ashok Agarwal of the three-member NCPCR team that visited the school for three days from June 9 and interviewed a section of students and the principal, had said that he was not ruling out the possibility of humiliation and corporal punishment leading to Rouvanjit's suicide.

Pointing out that the NCPCR did neither speak to the teachers allegedly involved in the controversy nor recorded their views, Biswas accused the Commission of conducting the investigations as per its "whims and fancies".

Biswas alleged that most of the students the Commission interviewed neither belonged to Rouvanjit's class, nor were very familiar with him, as it was a rule in La Martinere to reshuffle students inter-section at the beginning of each academic session.

"It is also very surprising that the investigating team had gone to the press with its views before submitting its report to the NCPCR. As far as we know, the team was there to investigate and not give its judgement," he told PTI.

Charging that vested interests were trying to use Rouvanjit's suicide to settle personal scores, he said the controversy was "suspiciously" close to the removal of a member from the Board of Governors and the exclusion of his books from the school curriculum.

The West Bengal Association of Christian Schools and the Bangiya Christiya Pariseba, an apex Christian body in West Bengal were also conducting a joint investigation into the matter.