Trustees Of Maharashtra School Where Minors Were Assaulted Missing

The Special Investigating Team (SIT) probing the sexual assault of two four-year-old girls inside their school in Maharashtra's Badlapur has declared two trustees of the school missing on Friday, police sources told NDTV.

The crime branch and cyber police team have been searching for both the trustees after the SIT registered a case of negligence against them and summoned them to record their statements.

A police team visited the house of the trustees, but did not find them there.

On August 23, the SIT registered an FIR against the school authorities, for not complying with the provisions of Section 19 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), which mandates that every authority, when they come to know about any such kind of sexual assault against minors, are obligated to report this to police authorities.

Earlier, the Bombay High Court, which took suo motu cognizance of the alleged sexual assault of two girls, underscored that "male chauvinism" persists in our society and that nothing will change until children are taught about equality.

"You need to change the mindset of the boys when they are young. Teach them to respect the other gender, respect women," said a division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithiviraj Chavan on August 27.

"We always speak about girls. Why don't we tell boys what is right and wrong? We need to change the mindset of boys when they are young. Teach them to respect women," the court added.

The kindergarten students were allegedly sexually abused by a school attendant, who has been arrested. The incident triggered huge protests.

The wife of the accused claims her husband was a sexual pervert, sources have told NDTV, adding that this was the reason his first wife left him. 

The Bombay High Court also sought to know if the school ran a background check on the accused before hiring him and why the students were sent will a male attendant.

The court also slammed the lapses by the police in the case. "The mandate of the law is not followed by Badlapur police. They attempted to record the victim girl's statements at the police station. There is complete non-compliance with the mandate. Asking the victim and her parents to come to the police station for a statement recording is completely insensitive and against the law," it said.

Following the incident, the Maharashtra government issued a directive to all the schools in the state to install CCTV cameras on their premises within a month.