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High Court constituted the committee in a suo moto case of sexual assault on a three-year-old girl allegedly by a cleaner working in a school in South Delhi
The Delhi High Court has recently set up a three-member committee to inspect safety standards in schools to prevent crimes against students.
A division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sanjeev Narula said that a committee called the Child Safety Monitoring Committee (CSMC) will be responsible to ensure that the safety measures mentioned in the Delhi Government’s 2017 circular are implemented and monitored.
The Committee will be headed by former Legal Services officer, R.M. Sharma, as the Chairperson and the other two members are; Ranjana Prasad, Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) and Maini Brar, Advocate.
“The CSMC headed by the Chairperson is assigned the job of inspecting the schools in Delhi in respect of minimum standards of school safety and other ancillary matters related to the issue”, the court said in its order dated September 27.
The court directed the CSMC to submit its report in six months. “The time of the CSMC shall also be extendable in case the CSMC is not able to submit a report within six months”, the court clarified.
Furthermore, the court directed the Chief Secretary, Delhi Government to provide all necessary facilities, including a Secretariat to the Chairperson and the Members of CSMC in order to monitor and carry out inspections in various schools in respect of school safety and other matters related to the schools. It also directed the Chief Secretary to provide all logistic support in the matter to the CSMC. Accordingly, the court listed the matter for further consideration on April 18, 2024.
Court passed the order in a suo moto Public Interest Litigation (PIL) pertaining to sexual assault on a three-year-old girl allegedly by a cleaner working in a school in South Delhi.
Notably, on September 1, the Delhi government's standing counsel, Santosh Tripathi had proposed before the high court that it should constitute a “permanent child safety monitoring committee”. Tripathi had submitted, "It is my request. We need a permanent child safety monitoring committee with the support of the Department of Education (DoE) because this is needed. This incident should not happen again. It was very traumatic".
Background
In the case, on August 8, a division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Saurabh Banerjee had noted, “It has been brought to the notice of this Court by Hon’ble Mr. Justice Subramonium Prasad, a news item published in the Times of India in respect of a three-year-old girl child who was sexually assaulted by a school cleaner in South Delhi”.
The court had said, "Let a Suo motu PIL be registered based on the newspaper report".
“Let a status report be filed positively within two weeks from today in respect of action taken in the matter by the Delhi Police as well as by the Education Department, GNCTD,” the bench had directed.
“Mr. Santosh Tripathi, learned counsel appearing on behalf of Government of NCT of Delhi, while filing the status report, will mask the name of the girl child as well as the names of the parents of the girl child, and shall undertake all necessary measures to protect the identity and right to privacy of the girl child. He shall take care that the media acts in compliance with the statutory provisions as contained in Section 23 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act), 2012”, the court had said in its order dated August 2.
According to the Times of India report, the alleged 33-year-old accused Arjun Kumar is a resident of Old Gautam Budh Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. A case under sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 377 (unnatural offences) of the IPC and Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act has been filed against Kumar.
Case Title: Court on its own motion v. Government of NCT of Delhi
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