Seven-Year-Old Sarbjit Kaur, who has lost both her parents to AIDS and is herself HIV-positive, was today able to return to her school.Acting on an Indian Express report, the Punjab State Education Department directed that Sarbjit, a student of Class II, be readmittted to Government High School, Jalalabad, Tarn Taran. While her aunt, who is raising Sarbjit, claims the school had put pressure on them to withdraw her from the school, saying an injury she had suffered below her eye scared other children, the school authorities insisted that the family didn’t want the girl to continue her studies.Notably, Sarbjit’s school-leaving certificate mentions no reason for her name being struck off the rolls. “She went to school today,” her aunt Kaushalya said. “After the case was highlighted by The Indian Express, her teachers called us and said that she can start coming to school. I am very happy. Education will give meaning to her life.” Kaushalya says that earlier Sarbjit’s schoolteacher had summoned her and inquired if she was HIV-positive. When she replied in the affirmative, Kaushalya was reportedly told not to send Sarbjit to school as she had a wound which was not healing. “I am happy that they have realised their mistake and taken her back,” said the aunt. Sarbjit’s cousin Kulwinder Kaur, who studies in the same school, beamed: “We will again go to school together.”
