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‘Hum yahin padhenge, hum yahin padhenge’: MP school under demolition shadow

It also comes a day after the school’s principal Afsha Sheikh, mathematics teacher Anas Atahar and security guard Rustam Ali were arrested over allegations for forcing girl students to wear a headscarf.

A bulldozer near the school in Damoh, MP. (Express photo by Anand Mohan J)

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A bulldozer, barricades, and policemen in riot gear — these were the scenes Tuesday near the Ganga Jamuna Higher Secondary School in Madhya Pradesh’s Damoh district, a day after the municipal authority threatened to demolish parts of the school it considers unauthorised.

It also comes a day after the school’s principal Afsha Sheikh, mathematics teacher Anas Atahar and security guard Rustam Ali were arrested over allegations for forcing girl students to wear a headscarf.

“Hum yahin padenge, hum yahin padenge (we will study here),” said a weeping Alfiya (10), standing near the barricades.

On June 7, the police filed a case against 11 members of the school management committee. (Express photo)

Alfiya’s mother died during childbirth, and she was raised by her aunt, Mubarika Begum. “You are playing with their future. Our children have been studying here for 12 years.

This has become such a big issue,” she told the police. The family was part of students and parents protesting against the closure of the school, which was derecognised earlier this month after the Home Minister and Chief Minister spoke against it.

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Troubles began for the school late last month when a poster celebrating its success in class 10 Board exams was put up outside the premises, featuring non-Muslim students in headscarves.

In fact, one of the students on the poster was principal Afsha Sheikh’s daughter. Shiekh, who has been sent to judicial custody following her arrest, started as an English teacher after completing a B.Ed course from a college in Damoh. Two of her children study in the same school in classes 8 and 11, while her eldest daughter is a college student.

On Tuesday, Sheikh Iqbal, her husband, was inconsolable, breaking down outside a courtroom in Damoh as his wife’s bail application was heard. “Politics ne mera parivaaar barbaad kar diya (politics has ruined my family),” he said.

Parents protesting against the closure of the school. (Express photo)

He has been trying to figure out how to get his wife out on bail while also making calls to lawyers to help stay the potential demolition. “We put up that poster where even my daughter featured. It was a cause for celebration. Instead of looking forward to school, she is seeing her mother behind bars. My children are stunned, scared. I have sent them away for the time being,” he said.

Established by the Ganga Jamuna Welfare Society in 2010, this is the only English-medium school in the town’s Futera ward, catering to 1,200 students that come from working-class households and whose parents work as farmhands, beedi makers and labourers.

On Sunday, the Chief Municipal Officer informed the school authorities that an inspection carried out by the surveyor branch “found that the building construction work is being done by you without the approval of the municipality”. The CMO gave three days to produce relevant documents, failing the “building will be removed/changed/demolished… and the amount of its expenses and penalty will be recovered from you under the Municipal Act, 1961”.

Police personnel deployed at Ganga Jamuna school in Damoh. (Express photo)

On Tuesday morning, a team from the municipal corporation arrived with a bulldozer claiming that they were “on a sanitation drive”. This was met with resistance from locals, who produced copies of the notice saying they still had enough time.

The team eventually retreated, but returned in the evening alongside heavy police force. They entered the school premises and began dismantling iron beams from the first floor of a newly constructed building, where the school administration was preparing to house senior students in its first-ever smart classrooms.

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CMO B L Singh told The Indian Express, “We had asked the school authorities to provide documents for the new building adjacent to the main building of the school. They told us they don’t have the proper documents. So we are removing illegal construction on the first floor. We are waiting for more documents to assess other areas of the school premises. In the morning, a team from the sanitation department had turned up with a bulldozer to clean the area’s canals, and the locals thought that we had come to demolish the school. They protested quite vigorously. We returned with a police force which supported us.”

Angered over the sight of the bulldozer, children from the locality raised slogans such as “Humaara school chalu karo (resume our schooling).” The students face an uncertain future with the school’s recognition taken away and the new batch expected to start on June 15.