6 months after Rouvanjit hangs self,father gets text to clear dues

The message sent to Ajay Rawla said: “Your La Martniere School’s payment of Rs 6,225.00 will be debited on 13/08/2010. Please keep the account funded.”

The Class VIII student’s father said this was the second time in the last three months that he has got a message to clear fees. No payment is pending,Ajay Rawla said.

Rawla told Express Online: “I am very pained by the message I received today. The school seems to have such a sense of power that they do not care about anything.” Rawla said he had protested when he received the first message in June but the school still has not updated its records.

He said: “I have got no response in the last three months from the school but only these two messages to clear dues.”

Meanwhile,school authorities were quick to their defence and blamed the electronic system that generates such text messages.

Supriya Dhar,the secretary of the board of governors of La Martiniere,said: “This is a data entry error in the system. The message was not meant for Mr Rawla. We have outsourced the whole process of sending out text messages.”

According to school authorities,the name of Ajay Rawla was put in front of another student and thus by default the message was sent to him. A school official said: “In June,we had raised the issue with the service provider but the mistake has occurred again. We have personally taken note of this and it will not be repeated.”

The text-message row erupted at a time when the school is under pressure after the National Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) recommended the removal of Principal Sunirmal Chakrabarti and the head of middle school L G Gunion for allegedly meting out corporal punishment to Rouvanjit in February.

The school has refused to act on the recommendations,picking loopholes in the NCPCR probe. The school said it had already acted according to service rules.