Jorhat police went into a tizzy last night following the disappearance of 14 children of Jorhat Blind School from their hostel.
Nandini Kakati, DSP, law and order, here said it took her more than four hours to trace the children, eight boys and six girls, who had all made their way or were on their way home in different buses.
“It was difficult to find their whereabouts as the photos were of a time when they had taken admission and were much younger. The phone numbers provided by their parents in most of the cases had not been updated. After we managed to trace one we could go on from there,” she said.
“The OCs and ICs of the respective police stations or outposts under which the addresses of these children fell, verified that each child reached home safely and those who resided in other districts like Tinsukia, Golaghat and Sivasagar also spent the night with the others as they refused to the hostel. Their parents were informed and were asked to take them away,” Kakati further said
Two pairs of parents came today and after verification, they were allowed to go. Kakati said that the children had decided to leave as the school did not have a regular science teacher, a math teacher and librarian.
Moreover, the hostel facility especially the water taps were not functioning properly as a result of which all the children could not take baths before coming to schools. There were some other problems.
The caretaker in the hostel said that she did not know when these children had fled and that it was only later that she noticed that they were missing.
On February 16 this year a group of students from Jorhat Blind School had boycotted classes and met Virendra Mittal, the then Jorhat deputy commissioner and apprised him of their problems.
Mittal had said that he would make arrangements for teachers from Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan to go and teach there. They had also complained against the Principal in charge Sangeeta Borthakur and some of the teachers.
They had been accompanied by two employees Niroda Devi and Ruby Das. The DSP said that she had strictly instructed the school authorities to keep the gate locked and immediately appoint a chowkider as there were more students left in the hostel.