Sunday, September 11 2005 18:42 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: School authorities and teachers beware! If any of your students falls victim to sexual abuse inside the institution, you could end up spending six months in jail.

In a significant ruling aimed at ensuring that a school guarantees the security of its wards, the Juvenile Justice Court here has said the management and teachers cannot escape liability if any of their wards suffers any form of mental or physical abuse.

It has asked the police to act tough in all such cases. In two recent incidents where a kid was sodomised by an attendant in a playschool and a boy was sexually abused by three of his classmates for over a year in a school, Juvenile Justice Board Principal Magistrate Santosh Snehi Mann ordered the arrest of authorities and teachers under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act.

Section 23 of the Act says "whoever having actual charge or control over a juvenile or child exposes or wilfully neglects the juvenile or causes him to be assaulted in a manner which is likely to cause unnecessary mental or physical suffering to the child shall be punished for six months".

Raising apprehension about the safety of children in playschools, the five-year-old son of a lawyer was sexually abused by a Nepali boy who was employed to look after the kids in a East Delhi creche.