PUNE: A 22-year-old youth stabbed a 16-year-old Std X girl student, in full view of at least 20 of her classmates gathered for a farewell, inside a private aided school in Wadgaonsheri around 11am on Monday.
The youth stabbed her in the stomach and on her wrists and back before fleeing. The girl sustained four deep cuts and is being treated at a private hospital.
Late on Monday, the girl’s father told TOI that she had been operated upon and was out of danger.
The youth tried to end his life by stabbing himself and consuming poison after he left the school. “We will arrest him after he is discharged from hospital,” assistant inspector Sameer Karpe of the Yerawada police told TOI.
A police officer said the girl and the youth were neighbours till the latter’s family shifted to another locality in the same area on Sunday.
Karpe said the youth came to the school's ground-floor verandah, where the farewell was underway, and attacked the girl with a knife .
Yerawada police's senior inspector Yunus Shaikh and Karpe rushed to the school after being told of the incident. A case for offences under sections 307 (attempt to murder) and 354-D (stalking) of the Indian Penal Code and under relevant sections of the POCSO Act has been registered.
One of the two teachers present at the site told TOI, "There were two guards manning the school's main gate. They did not realize what the youth was up to when he told them that he wanted to meet the girl. Since all students were in casual clothes, the guards did not realize that the youth was not a student."
Another teacher told TOI, "On approaching the girl, the youth shouted at her saying that she had cheated him and started attacking her. By the time we rushed to intervene, the girl was lying injured on the floor. Other students were running around in a state of panic. Chaos prevailed for the next several minutes."
The teachers immediately reported the matter to the girl's parents, who stay nearby, and took her to a private hospital close to the school.
"In her preliminary statement to the police, the girl identified her attacker. Our team went to his house where we learnt that he too had been admitted to a hospital in Chandannagar. The doctors told our team that he had stabbed himself and consumed poison, but was out of danger," Karpe said.
Karpe said it was not known as yet where and when the youth stabbed himself and what poison he had consumed. "We have deployed security around his room and will arrest him," he added.
Teachers insisted that they had taken precautions after the girl's parents had informed them about the youth stalking their daughter.
The girl's father, who is a tailor, told TOI, "We migrated from Jharkhand to Pune in 2002. Till recently, we were staying in a house next to the youth's. He had been harassing and troubling my daughter for the last few months. We moved to another house three months ago, and his family too shifted out on Sunday. But he kept following and harassing my daughter."
The father said he had approached the youth's parents a week ago and requested them to keep a check on their son. "His parents assured me that he would not harass my daughter. We also planned to lodge a police complaint against him," he added.
A prominent city educationist, who heads the trust that runs the school, said, "We will constitute a committee to fix responsibility pertaining to how the youth managed to enter the school's premises and if there was a security lapse. We will also seek the police's report. For now, we are extending all cooperation to the police."
