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CHENNAI, INDIA, June 17, 2003: It often takes a tragedy of magnitude to call attention to a matter of grave importance. Ramu Abhinav’s suicide in Chennai has alerted the human rights commission in Tamil Nadu to demand a full investigation into the circumstances. It is too late for 16-year old Ramu whose suicide note indicated that he was fed up with school. Relatives and classmates attested to the fact that Ramu was recently beaten by his teacher for not attending a special coaching class, and this was not the first time a beating had occurred. “One of Ramu’s cousins who left the school a few years ago and is now studying engineering at university — says the behavior of the staff at the school was brutal and impulsive.” Other students have come out into the open and have described punishment in a cell-like dark room, where they were stripped and the teacher’s identity could not be ascertained. Both human and child rights activists are loudly proclaiming and blaming the beatings on outdated education laws which permit corporal punishment. On one side, the human rights activists want to see the present laws completely abolished. However Aludai Pillai, former vice-chancellor of Madurai University, says that an expert committee has been appointed to update the rules. Pillai adds, “We dismissed a teacher when we came to know about it. Corporal punishment in front of classmates causes enormous mental agony affecting his personality.”

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