MUMBAI, Sept 28: An 11-year-old student was seriously injured when she was hit by a motorcycle on the busy Annie Besant Road near Bengal Chemicals today. Parents of the injured girl alleged neglect by the school authorities.
Aeman Faruqui, studying in Std VII at Convent Girls’ High School, Prabhadevi, sustained a head injury and requires to undergo an operation. According to the Aeman’s mother Najma Faruqui, the motorcyclist hit her daughter when she had quickly avoided a passing taxi while crossing the road.
According to Najma the Std VII students were asked to stay back today to be briefed about a cultural programme scheduled for November. The students were not any advance notice about this neither was any arrangement made for the school bus to wait, she informed. The school is currently holding its semester examinations and the third paper was conducted today. Aeman along with three of her classmates was walking towards her Worli Seaface residence around noon since the lone school bus for KG studentswould not accommodate them.
Barely had she walked for about five minutes when the accident occurred. Aeman was unconscious for a while but managed to give her residence telephone number to a motorist passing by who informed her mother. The motorist however took the child to Podar hospital.
Faruqui said the school authorities did not respond when she tried to contact them on phone. Charging the school of “sheer neglect,” she said if the school had informed the children in advance about the meeting, they would have made necessary travel arrangements. “Moreover, there is no phone facility in the school for students either,” she said.
Repeated phone calls to the school principal, by this reporter too, proved futile. A girl who said she was a student staying with the nuns answered the phone but refused to call anyone from the school’s administration.