Five days after the incident at the MC Model Girls High School, top officials of Rawalpindi’s district administration have still not visited the school where 60 masked men armed with iron rods barged in last Friday.
The school teachers told The Express Tribune that district administration officials were ignoring the incident and are allegedly under immense pressure to leak out any information regarding the incident.
(Read: Shape of things to come?)
One of the two heads of the MC schools told The Express Tribune that the district administration on Wednesday sought an explanation from the principals as to how the incident happened. “It’s amazing that after the intervention of the National Assembly Speaker, intelligence agencies and district administration officials began their initial work,” a senior teacher at the school said.
Maulana Abdul Rashid, a teacher at MC Boys High School told The Express Tribune that if authorities did not take steps to resolve the issue, he would move to close down schools across the province in protest.
“Due to fear of the masked men a considerable number of the students are still not attending the school,” he said.
The school principal confirmed that students are still realing under fear. “They also misbehaved with teachers and students,” he said.
It was also learnt that the school administration of MC schools mentioned fear behind low attendance in their daily report to the Chief Minister of Punjab. “The incident is still fresh in the mind of my daughter Maria, a second grade student. She discussed with us the horrible moment when school girls were crying,” said Umair Akram.
He said that all his three daughters were studying at MC Girls High School.
School principal Kishwar Naheed when asked, said that because of fear the girls were in a panic but soon after the incident they overcame the crisis with the help of teachers from the boys branch. “It is wrong to say that masked men also beat the students or thrashed any teacher at the school,” she said.
When contacted, Chaudhry Shahbaz, Education Officer of the MC schools, said that seminary students from nearby attacked the schools, striking back against the Rawalpindi court’s decision to award the death sentence to Mumtaz Qadri, the self-confessed murderer of Salman Taseer.
When asked why no FIR was registered against the culprits so far, he confessed to but insisted that law enforcement agencies were alert to cope with any untoward situation.
The police officials in turn said that the complainant did not approach the police station for registration of FIR.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 13th, 2011.
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