The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court has cancelled the FIR and legal proceedings against a school principal and a doctor from Nandurbar. They were booked after a school sweeper was accused of showing a pornographic video to a Class 5 girl.

The girl's mother had filed a complaint, and the police registered a case against the principal and doctor under Section 21(2) of the POCSO Act for allegedly not reporting the incident. However, the court said that just failing to report something doesn’t always mean a crime has been committed, the person’s intention also matters. The bench, made up of Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Sanjay A Deshmukh, said the principal and doctor should not face charges in this case.

The parents of the girl claimed that the school principal and the doctor had tried to stop them from filing a police complaint. According to the police, the incident took place on August 27 last year at the school. The girl told her mother about it after reaching home. She said that while she was standing on the school grounds in the morning, a sweeper asked her to go to the library to check if any teacher was there.

When she went to the library, the sweeper also came in and asked her to check if the internet was working on his phone. The girl said he showed her “dirty videos.” She immediately gave the phone back and tried to leave. When the sweeper asked her about her schedule after school, she did not respond.

After the girl told her mother what had happened, her mother asked if the sweeper had done anything else to her, and the girl said no. Since school was over, the mother approached a teacher who lived nearby and shared the incident with her.
The teacher quickly contacted the school principal, who then arranged for the CCTV footage to be shown to the girl’s mother. The sweeper had been working at the school for over 25 years. The principal told the girl's parents they were free to file a complaint and that the school would take steps to remove the sweeper.

However, it was claimed that a doctor, who is also the secretary of the trust that runs the school told the parents that if they filed an FIR, their names might appear in newspapers and they could face embarrassment.
The prosecution opposed the petition from the principal and the secretary, saying they had tried to stop the parents from filing the complaint.

After reviewing the case, the court said that school authorities cannot be expected to file a report unless they are sure the complaint is true. The judges pointed out that the girl did not try to tell her teacher or any other staff about the incident while she was still at school. The court added that young girls usually feel more comfortable talking to their mothers first. Some might talk to friends or teachers, but that depends on the girl's maturity and comfort level. Just because the girl didn’t report it right away doesn’t mean the school staff purposely failed to act or committed an offence.

On the issue of the doctor warning the parents about possible defamation, the court said this couldn’t be seen as a threat, especially since the school had clearly said they had not deleted the CCTV footage and had no intention of doing so. The court also noted that, according to the parents’ statement, they didn’t feel threatened and went straight to the police after visiting the principal’s house.

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