The Hindu : National : Students, parents meet Minister on Patan scandal

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National

Students, parents meet Minister on Patan scandal

Manas Dasgupta

GANDHINAGAR: A delegation of girl students of the Patan Primary Teachers’ Training College in north Gujarat and their parents was here on Thursday to express their outrage on the sex scandal in the campus.

Security staff at the Secretariat initially refused to give permission to all the members of the delegation to enter the complex. They wanted only a smaller group to call on the Ministers and officials concerned. The matter, however, was sorted out on the intervention of the Education Department and all the members were allowed in.

The delegation met Education Minister Ramalal Vora, Minister of State for Higher Education Mayaben Kodnani and others and demanded protection for the girl students and necessary governmental support to the victim.

It also met Pankaj Kumar, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and later expressed satisfaction over the steps taken by the State government so far.

Report denied

Revenue Minister Anandiben Patel, who formerly held the education portfolio and also represents Patan in the Assembly, denied a report in a section of the press that at least two of the accused teachers of the PTC college were closely associated with her and were her election agents in the last two consecutive Assembly elections.

Claiming that the government would not spare anyone guilty of sexually exploiting innocent girl students, Ms. Patel said her political rivals were deliberately spreading a canard about alleged links with the accused teachers to defame her after failing to defeat her in the elections.

A State-wide “education bandh” call given by the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the students’ wing of the Congress, by and large went unheeded as most of the schools and colleges functioned normally. A group of NSUI activists damaged furniture at the Gujarat University.

Meanwhile, the medical report of the 18-year-old victim is said to confirm her sexual exploitation, but gave the lie to the initial report that she was pregnant.

The scandal came to light after the girl fainted at the prayer meeting on Monday. and on being rushed to the Patan hospital was told that the cause of the fainting was her pregnancy.

The medical report said the girl was fainting due to the psychological trauma she was subjected to because of the repeated gang rape.

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