Panchkula school assault: Eight-year-old sent to Observation Home over brutal attack on KG girl
PTC News Desk: The Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) in Panchkula has sent an eight-year-old boy to the Observation Home in Ambala after he was accused of repeatedly hitting a six-year-old girl on the head with a brick at a school in Sector 20.
In an order dated October 31, the board directed that the boy be kept at a “place of safety” while the inquiry continues. He was brought before the board under the protective custody of juvenile officer PSI Suresh Pal. The next hearing is scheduled for November 4, when the boy must appear in person. The board also directed that he be taken to GMCH, Sector 32, Chandigarh, for medical procedures on November 2.
The boy has been booked under Sections 115(2), 117(2) and 127(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, relating to causing hurt, causing grievous hurt and wrongful confinement. The board is waiting for the inquiry report.
The girl is being treated at PGI, Chandigarh. Sources said she was stable and out of danger, although her condition remained serious.
According to police records, the incident happened during school hours on October 28. The girl’s father said he had arranged an auto-rickshaw to take her home. After school, the driver called to say she had not come out. The father went to the school and asked staff to look for her. A child then told him she was in a room and that another child had hit her.
The father alleged that the boy took him to a first-floor room whose door was latched from the outside. Looking through a window, he saw his daughter lying on the floor in a pool of blood. After the staff opened the room, he took her to a private hospital in Sector 21.
At the hospital, school staff showed him a video which, he alleged, showed the boy taking his daughter into the room and repeatedly hitting her with a brick. He said she was admitted to the intensive care unit.
Police recorded a daily diary entry at Sector 20 police station on October 28, after receiving information from the hospital. The father said he could not give a statement then because he was focused on his daughter’s treatment. The diary entry says a doctor had found him fit to give a statement. He filed his complaint on October 30.
That day, police took the boy to the Civil Hospital in Sector 6 for a mental assessment. A psychiatric social worker referred him to GMCH-32, where doctors asked that he return at 9 am on October 31. The boy was handed over to his father on October 30 and appeared before the JJB the following day.
Police said a crime-scene team inspected the room and seized a blood-stained brick, blood samples from the floor, an iron-sheet dustbin and the dustbin itself. The police diary notes that electronic evidence of the scene could not be recorded because the investigating officer’s phone battery had run low.
Police said further action would be taken after they receive the girl’s injury report and the boy’s mental assessment report.
Separately, an FIR was registered on October 31 following a complaint by the girl’s uncle. It names the school principal, a class in-charge and a chowkidar, alleging negligence and claiming the girl was left inside the locked room for about two hours.
- PTC NEWS
