Chandigarh shocker: Woman teacher arrested for allegedly sexually abusing 14-year-old boy

CHANDIGARH: A woman teacher has been arrested in Chandigarh on Thursday for allegedly sexually abusing her minor student, according to the media reports. The 14-year-old boy, a Class 10 student, was taking tuition from her for quite some time.

The 34-year-old government school science teacher and the boy are neighbours at Ram Darbar Colony in Sector 31, Chandigarh. Since the two families knew each other well for long, the victim and his younger sister started taking tuitions from the woman in September 2017. 

Things were fine in the beginning. But, the teacher later requested the boy’s parents to send their daughter for tuition separately so that she could ‘focus’ on their son. 

The parents agreed on the condition that the teacher would give quality education to their son. However, the woman started getting physical with the boy in the beginning of 2018. 

She also reportedly gave him a SIM card to stay in touch with her. As the boy's grades dropped in March, his parents stopped him from going to the teacher's house for tuitions. But this did not end there as the teacher, who is the mother of two girls, aged 10 and eight years old, had grown highly possessive about the boy. 

In April, the teacher contacted his parents again with a request to send him for tuitions. In her desperation to meet the boy, she even urged the parents to come to her house along with the boy for a meeting on Monday.

When they arrived, the teacher locked the boy in a room in her house in the presence of his parents, her husband and her daughters. The woman asked her husband to stay out of the matter and kept pleading the boy's parents to allow him to stay with her. As the situation grew worse, neighbours intervened and the boy was finally rescued.

But the drama didn’t end there. As the boy's parents reached their house, the teacher also came following hem and barged into their residence, carrying a bottle of cough syrup. She swallowed the whole bottle threatening the family that she was committing suicide.

The parents then called the police and the woman was taken to hospital on Monday night. 

The boy’s parents later contacted Childline - a 24-hour toll-free telephone helpline service for children in distress - on Wednesday.

Dr Sangeeta Jund, the project director of Childline, Chandigarh, then advised them to lodge a formal complaint with the police. Consequently, a case under Section 6 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was registered against the woman teacher.

The teacher was produced before the POCSO court, which remanded her to judicial custody on Thursday.