Death of Rajkot girl in school: Death forced authorities to relax school timings, says mother

Following Riya’s death, a note was pasted on the notice board of AVJV, which read, “ Due to the very cold weather, as ordered by the DEO (district education officer), the school hours will be 8:30 to 12:30 from tomorrow onwards. Every parent requested to take special note of this.”

“I am happy that she became the reason for this change. I hope no school will force students to wear only the woollen jumpers and jackets prescribed by them as they might not be sufficient to protect children from cold weather. Kindly allow them to wear proper jackets,” says Janki.

Riya had collapsed three minutes after walking into her classrooom after the morning assembly, The Indian Express has learnt.

On Thursday, two officers from the office of the DEO of Rajkot camped in the school, talking to principal Asmita Desai and other teachers to prepare a report about the incident.

A staff member was busy saving CCTV footage of Tuesday morning on a computer.

Entire school is under surveillance of CCTV cameras and Riya’s last moments remain stored in the digital video recorder (DVR) of the surveillance system.

In the footage, Riya, wearing unzipped navy-blue winter jacket over a sky-blue T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans, is seen plodding her way into her classroom after getting her fingernails checked by a monitor of that class at the entrance at 7:13 am on Tuesday.

Looking listless, she takes her seat on the bench right next to the doorway. In an apparent sign of discomfort, she is seen placing her left hand on her forehead at 7:15 am. Then she tries to support her head with her right arm but seconds later, she collapses from the bench all of a sudden. Fellow students lift her from under the bench and help her lay on the floor.

Deepa Naik, one of her teachers is the first adult to respond to the alarm calls by students and she covers Riya in a shawl even as other students start rubbing Riya’s palms and soles after removing her shoes.

The CCTV footage shows Riya’s mother Janki and her father Kiran entering the classroom at 7:25 am. The mother is seen holding one of Riya’s shoes near the nose of the seemingly unconscious girl.

At 7:28 am, Kishor Boricha, a school van driver, is seen bringing his van near the entrance of the main building. The van leaves for the hospital at 7:31 and reaches a nearby hospital in around five minutes. But doctors at the hospital had declared Riya dead on arrival.

“A teacher from the school rang me up, informing me that Riya had suffered an epileptic seizure. I was in complete shock when I saw my daughter lying on the floor, surrounded by her teachers and classmates. As I had heard that one recovers from an epileptic seizure if someone makes her smell her shoe, I did that. But I must say, seeing what was happening to my daughter, I was hardly in control of myself,” Janki, a homemaker who has studied till Class X, said on Thursday.

Riya’s father Kiran is a jeweller. The family hails from coastal Shil village in Mangrol taluka of Junagadh.
The Sagars were living in Kampala in Uganda before the Covid-19 pandemic forced them to return to Rajkot a couple of years ago. The couple’s younger daughter, Nirali (8) is a Class II student in the same school.

“On Tuesday morning, I saw nothing unusual in Riya’s behaviour. As usual, she dressed herself up, packed her school bag and lunch box, filled her water bottle and waved me goodbye,” the mother further says, adding, “She was a cheerful girl with no history of any illness. Nor did she have epileptic seizures before. The cold killed her as the jacket prescribed by the school was not enough to keep her warm.”

But the school principal rejects suggestion that the school had debarred students from wearing woollens other than prescribed by the school and points to CCTV footage of that class, showing at least four students wearing jackets of other colour. “But Riya would always keep her jacket unzipped. That was her style,” Desai says, adding, “Even as we wait for forensic reports to ascertain causes of her death, it will be too early to say she died due to cold weather.”

“Our teachers and students started rubbing Riya’s palms and soles soon after she collapsed. We immediately informed her parents and rushed her to a hospital in a school van. We tried everything which was within our reach. But nothing worked. Maybe, that was her destiny,” the 63-year-old principal says.

The school is run by Shri Kathiawar Nirashrit Balashram, a charitable organisation founded in 1907 and which also runs an orphanage and an old-age home in the city.