PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has summoned the principal and a senior teacher of a private school in Mardan district over the expulsion of a fourth-grade girl after her alleged humiliation and corporal punishment.

A bench consisting of Justice Lal Jan Khattak and Justice Mussarat Hilali fixed Dec 14 for the next hearing into the petition filed on behalf of schoolgirl Ansa Khan by her mother, Seema Gul, requesting the court to declare her expulsion by the Mardan Model School and College illegal and order her re-enrolment.

The petitioner said her orphan daughter shouldn’t be victimised.

She also requested the court to grant the girl the interim relief of re-enrolment in that school until the disposal of the petition.

The respondents in the petition are the school’s principal, its coordinator and senior teacher, provincial education secretary, and managing director of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Private Schools Regulatory Authority.

Petition seeks fourth grader’s re-enrolment

Saleem Shah Hoti, lawyer for the petitioner, said the girl was a fourth grader in the Mardan school and as her notebooks weren’t checked for several days, her mother requested a senior teacher first on Sept 17, 2021, and later on Sept 21 for the checking of them, but to no avail.

He added that the teacher got so infuriated over the requests that when the girl went to the school on Sept 24, she was slapped, pulled by hair, dragged across the floor and was not even allowed to sit in the classroom.

The lawyer insisted that the girl’s mother visited the school next morning to complain about the incident, but the senior teacher shouted at her and misbehaved.

He claimed that the teacher pulled the girl by hair and dragged her again.

The counsel said the teacher also called the principal and both of them misbehaved with the petitioner in front of staff members, both men and women.

He said the petitioner had deposited her daughter’s tuition fee for the month of Sept but even then, the latter was verbally informed by the administration about her expulsion from the school.

The lawyer added that the petitioner and her daughter were driven out of the school by a guard and weren’t allowed to enter the campus afterwards.

He contended that corporal punishment had been banned by the government in educational institutions, but even then, the senior teacher and principal of the private school subjected the girl to it.

The counsel contended that getting education was the fundamental right of the people in line with the Constitution, so the girl shouldn’t be denied that.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2021