BMC Denies 7-Year-Old Rape Survivor Seat Under RTE

“She’s poor; such things happen to poor people,” said a BMC Education Department official.

It seems families hardly know about the existence of the RTE act. Image used for representational purpose. (Photo: iStock)

A seven-year-old rape survivor has been denied school admissions under the Right to Education quota, for two successive years, over technicalities in the application process.

This is despite 62,000 vacant seats in the state under the quota, with Mumbai recording a vacancy of 67% after four rounds of admissions this month.

The child’s family, unable to afford her tuition fees, fears that she may have to drop out of school.

The girl, a watchman’s daughter, fell prey to a brutal sexual assault at the hands of her neighbour in a Jogeshwari (West) slum in November 2015.

After luring the then five-year-old child with a candy, the man took her to his shanty, raped her, and let her go. Too taken aback after the assault, the girl didn’t know what to do, and hid for the entire night in another neighbour’s hut.

When her parents found her the following morning. The child, who was heavily bruised on her neck and chest, apart from injuries to her private parts, courageously narrated her ordeal and repeated the details before the local police officers. The accused, a seventy-year-old man, was arrested soon after.

“I had heard about the child being brutalised via the press. At the time, I didn’t know who she was. But six months later, while walking out of a relative’s building, I saw her playing by the entrance gate. Someone then told me that she was the same girl,” narrates Simi Srivastava, a 51-year-old entrepreneur residing in Andheri (West).

“I went to her father, who was guarding the gate, and inquired about the plaster on her hand, wondering if it was from the assault. He said she had just fallen off a slide, and didn’t talk further. I tried talking to the girl, but she stayed quiet. I insisted on meeting the family,” said Srivastava.

When she met the family, Srivastava learnt that the girl’s father earned roughly Rs 4000 a month, of which, he paid Rs 3000 as rent. With the spare thousand rupees, he supported his wife, and three children.

The family, on a daily basis, would choose between lunch and dinner, able to afford only one meal a day.

The family told Srivastava that after the child was assaulted, she became withdrawn. She would miss sleep at nights, and stay to herself during days. She had also dropped out of a school run by missionaries. Srivastava, who wanted to help the child, asked her parents if they had sought school admission for her under the RTE quota, but the family, to her disbelief, were unaware of the scheme.

The child’s mother told The Quint,

After that incident, my girl is not like before. She has become slow, hardly pays attention when we speak to her, and after a couple of minutes, she’ll inquire if we said something. She has also resigned to silence, doesn’t speak unless necessary. But she enjoys studying. That’s her only respite. Until madam (Srivastava) informed us about RTE last year, we had never heard of it.

In early May, 2016, Srivastava visited the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) Education Department office in Dadar (East) to register the rape survivor under RTE.

She was told that the application deadline had passed a fortnight ago. She argued that the child should be given special consideration since she had been assaulted; however, none of her twelve visits to the office yielded any result. “She’s poor; such things happen to poor people,” she was once told at the office.

What is the point of having a brilliant scheme like Right to Education if you don’t inform your target audience about it? (Photo: iStock)

“Since the education office was not helping us, I decided to visit schools and request them for the girl’s admission,” said Ritika, Simi’s 22-year-old daughter, “For a month, I went from school to school to find a seat for the girl, but several of these establishments did not let me pass the main gate. One of the principals told me not to expect sympathy since there were ‘worse cases’ than the child’s tragedy.”

Finally, a private school in Andheri (West) agreed. The principal was sympathetic to the child’s ordeal. She said that the child could avail a seat under the general quota with an annual fee of Rs 40,000, and that before the next trimester begins, her admission would be transferred to the RTE quota.

Ritika, Simi’s daughter

Ritika stated that her family paid for her first trimester, and later for the remaining three, since the education department did not accept the transfer application.

“The principal, who was ardently trying to help the child, told us that the education department was just not responding to her requests. We readied all her documents, kept visiting the department’s Dadar office, but to no avail. Eventually, in April this year, the principal gave up.”

Ritika said that after that they visited the RTE office again and again, but the child’s application was repeatedly rejected.

“(They said) that the child was not eligible anymore for admission under RTE since she was now seven years old, and only children aged six years are eligible under the quota,” said Ritika, a marketing and finance student.

Raju Tadavi, the concerned BMC education officer said,

We can recommend the child’s admission to an English medium school under SSC board under the general quota. But we cannot get her an admission under the RTE quota because those admissions are done online. It’s the government’s jurisdiction, and we cannot help it.

Srivastava now plans on starting a social media campaign to help children like the seven-year-old rape survivor. She feels, however, that although the RTE is meant to facilitate free education for children from economically backward families, these families hardly know about the existence of such an act.

What is the point of having such a brilliant scheme if you don’t inform your target audience about it? There are thousands of seats lying vacant under the quota in the state, and yet, so many of those who deserve this benefit are not able to avail of it. 

Simi Srivastava

“With what has conspired in the past year over this child’s education, I feel liberated that my own children have grown up,” she added.

(Puja Changoiwala is a journalist, and author of the critically-acclaimed true crime book, ‘The Front Page Murders.’)