Protests after snake kills Indian schoolgirl in class

Angry students at an Indian school protested on Friday after a 10-year-old pupil died after being bitten by a venomous snake lurking in a hole under her desk.

Shehala Sherin was only taken to hospital from the school an hour after being bitten and once her leg turned blue, media reports said.

Her teacher, since suspended, ignored her cries of pain and protests from other pupils and carried on teaching the lesson on Wednesday at the school in Kerala, southern India.

Her parents drove her to four different hospitals but were told there was no anti-venom. She died on the way to a fifth clinic 90 kilometres (55 miles) away.

Classmates allege the teachers at the secondary school dismissed the injury as having been caused by a nail, stone or similar object.

Around 50,000 people are killed by snakes every year in India, mostly in rural areas, with high mortality rates blamed on a deficiency of health care centres and insufficient stocks of anti-venom.

Among the 150-200 pupils protesting, one with a plastic snake wrapped around his neck said the school had no first aid box and that snakes were common both in the playground and in classrooms, the Press Trust of India reported.

“The teachers are supposed to educate the children on how to react in such situations,” Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said, vowing strong action against those responsible.

Rahul Gandhi from the Congress party, who represents the local region, said that the school’s “crumbling infrastructure requires the urgent attention of the state government.” Even though Kerala, home to 35 million people and run for decades by communist state governments, has India’s highest literacy rate, like elsewhere its schools are often poorly maintained.

The Principal and Headmaster of the state-run SVHS School, where a 10-year-old student was bitten to death by a snake that slithered out in the classroom on Wednesday, have been suspended.

A wave of protests by various student outfits swept through the Wayanad town on Friday, affecting the functioning of the Wayanad Collectorate. S. Sherin, a Class-V student, was on Wednesday bitten by a snake on the floor of her classroom. She later died in a government hospital.

The decision to suspend the Principal and Headmaster was taken by the Wayanad district education authorities who also decided to dissolve the Parents Teacher Association of the school.

Student organisations attached to various political parties took turns to stage protests at the Wayanad Collectorate on Friday. The protest by the SFI, the student wing of the CPI-M, and the KSU (Congress) turned violent and the police had to use force to drive them away.

The protesters criticized the callous attitude of the school authorities and the hospital staff in providing immediate medical relief to the school girl.

A doctor at the local state-run hospital was also suspended after it was found that the girl could not get anti-venom shot as well as other medicines despite adequate stock at the hospital.

State Education Minister C. Raveendranath, who is reaching the school tomorrow, may face more protests as the student organisations have warned to intensify their agitation.

The Education Department on Friday issued a circular to all schools in the state to immediately call a PTA meeting and see that steps are urgently taken to clean up the school premises. The authorities have been told to provide first-aid training to all teachers.

On Friday morning, Wayanad district judge A. Harris, who is also the chairman of the district legal cell authority, along with two other judges, visited the school, located in the Lok Sabha constituency of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi at Sulthan Bathery.

“Though a teacher in the school has been suspended, that’s not enough. We demand that a case should be registered against other teachers and medical staff. We will continue our protest until tough action is taken,” said a student leading the protest.

According to Sherin’s classmates, the incident occurred at 3.10 p.m. and no action was taken by the school authorities till 3.50 p.m.

Agencies