Classmate assaults Margao girl, posts video on Youtube

Classmate assaults Margao girl, posts video on Youtube
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Margao: A video recording of a standard XII student being beaten up by a fellow student in the classroom and uploaded on youtube has left the victim depressed and traumatized.
The victim, a student of RMS higher secondary school Margao, in a complaint to the police said that at 3 pm on September 13, a classmate called her to the classroom stating that she wanted to talk to her. She then began to abuse and hit her. The following day, the victim learnt that a video clipping of her being beaten up had been uploaded on the net.
“I am hurt about the nasty comments on the internet against me. I suspect that the whole incident was planned to defame me,” said the victim, who has not attended class since that day and says she will never again go to the school. “Everybody is laughing at me. I have become a butt of ridicule and I can’t take the taunts and unwarranted comments from my schoolmates,” added the victim.
School principal Vinod Pawar admitted that the incident had occurred in the school. “We have asked for an explanation from both students. Both are adolescents and we are trying to sort the matter
amicably. If a compromise is not arrived at, I would have to take appropriate action.”
Pawar blamed the parents for the situation. “At all parents-teachers meetings, I had requested parents not to provide mobile phones to their children. Yet, more than 50% of the students bring mobiles and some misuse them. Parents are themselves responsible for such irresponsible behaviour of the students,” said Pawar.
Meanwhile, the girl’s mother has demanded action against the girl who assaulted her daughter and forwarded the video clip to mobile phones and posted it on internet sites.
In her complaint to the principal, she said that in the previous few days she had noticed an abrupt change in her daughter’s behaviour, which prompted her to quiz her. The mother claimed that the girl, otherwise “vibrant and vivacious”, had turned “distraught and depressed”, and was reluctantly attending class.
Upon questioning her daughter, the mother learnt that the former had been assaulted by one of her classmates and that a video clipping of the assault was being circulated among the students through mobile phones and the on internet.
The Margao police have registered a complaint and are investigating the matter.

September 26,2008, The Times of India, Goa edition