JOIN USTwo days after the High Court lashed out at a school for issuing a transfer certificate to a 13-year-old girl who gave birth to a baby after being raped, parents of the other children of her class are up in arms.
The protesting parents, who have been thronging the school, are in no mood to let the rape victim study with their children, stating that she would be a bad influence on them.
“She is unmarried and she has a baby. She will be a bad influence on our children and spoil the atmosphere,” one of the parents gathered outside the school, said.
The girl had been ostracised by her classmates owing to pressure from their parents and going back to the school for the girl, has been a traumatic experience. “But it does not matter. I just want to study as much as I can,” she told this paper.
The girl, studying in a Government Urdu Composite School in the City, was issued a transfer certificate a few days ago, after objections to her attending the school surfaced. Her parents had appealed to the High Court stating that they were under tremendous pressure from their community to withdraw the case against the rapist, now lodged in a jail, and get their daughter married to him. A police complaint was also lodged on Thursday by her parents requesting protection for them and for their daughter, from the members of the community involved in running the school.
According to the girl’s father, their community members want them to convince the 23-year-old man, who has confessed to the crime, to marry their daughter.
Ironically, the educated parents of the girl realised that their daughter was pregnant only on the day she delivered. The 13-year-old was raped at her home while her parents were away. Shakeel, the rapist, worked for the girl’s father who is into tile-laying business.