Int’l community apprised of city climate action plan
The international climate community was apprised of the forthcoming Kolkata Climate Action Plan on the sidelines of the recently-concluded UN climate conference, COP-29, at Baku, Azerbaijan.
Another incident of molestation of a class nine student was reported on Saturday from another south Kolkata school even before the dust could settle on the Carmel school incident.The alleged molester has been arrested. The laboratory assistant of Kamala Girls’ High school, Moloy Barua allegedly molested the class IX student of the school repeatedly over the past few weeks.
The victim said the accused further threatened her and her friends to not reveal anything to their parents or authorities. Narrating her ordeal, the victim said, “ His misbehaviour carried on for quite some time. He used to touch me inappropriately. Initially, I thought it was a mistake but when he repeatedly groped me last Thursday I confronted him. He said if I report these misconducts to anyone, it will turn worse.”
Barua used to travel in the school bus with the students, the victim said which made his access to the students easy. “ I was very scared. I could not tell anyone. When I returned home on Thurdsay, I broke down and narrated to my parents of his misconduct,” the victim said. The mother of the victim, said, “We want safety of the students and do not want any other students to be vulnerable.”
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Another classmate of the victim, said, “ When we found that she was being harassed he came up to us and said that we would have to keep quite otherwise he will make things worse for us.” Guardians here too pointed out there are no CCTV cameras inside the school premises and objected to the appointing of a male staff in an all girls school.
The teacher-in-charge of the school, Sikha Sarkar said, “ We could not install CCTV as like every other government school we run on a stipulated budget. The moment we received the complaint, we informed the Lake police station.”
Moloy was subsequently arrested from his Ranikuthi residence yesterday evening under sections 506(Punishment for criminal intimidation) and 354(Assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the IPC.He was also charged under section 8(Punishment for sexual assault)of the POSCO Act.The accused was remanded to police custody for three days in the Alipore Court on Saturday.
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