‘School was careless,I lost only son’

“When we reached there,we found that the teachers accompanying the children were staying in another block of the hotel. How could they leave small children alone like this? They should have stayed in the same building,” said Pravin Kumar Verma,Shivam’s uncle.

ITL School principal Anjali Sethi,however,refuted the allegations. “The teachers were always with the children. There were 10 children under each teacher. They must have stayed in different rooms at a distance,” she said. Twenty teachers and three caretakers accompanied the group,she added.

“We left the child with the school. It was their responsibity to take proper care,” said Nirmal Verma,Shivam’s mother. “They failed to do that. I lost my only son.”

“Why did they not check the safety of the hotel?” asked father Vijay Kumar Verma,a jeweller.

The post mortem report said the death happened within two and a half hours of Shivam taking dinner. He had head and rib injuries.

The family thinks Shivam could have been a victim of bullying. “There was a group in his school that used to tease Shivam. There was a fight on May 5,” said Nirmal,adding that “somebody must have pushed him”. But the school claims the children chose their roommates. “The balcony railing was low. He must have mistaken the bathroom door for the balcony door,” reasoned Sethi.

“The accident could have happened anywhere,” said the principal,adding that the trip has since been cut short.

‘Schools must exercise all precautions’
“It is the duty of the school to take care of the safety of the child while on a trip. Schools try and exercise all precaution. Normally a group of 10-12 students stays with one teacher. It is the responsibility of that teacher to make sure that every child is safe. The teacher stays with the children and goes to sleep only after they have slept.”

R K SHARMAprincipal,Ahlcon Public School,Mayur Vihar

Our teachers inspect and make sure the hotel is safe and that no outsiders are on the floor the students are staying in. The rooms must be interconnected. We give an hour for the children to call their parents and each is monitored by the teacher.

SUMAN NATH principal,Tagore International School,East of Kailash