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What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
DEHRADUN: Nainital Chief Judicial Magistrate court on Wednesday convicted Sherwood College, Nainital principal Amandeep Sandhu and two others under 304A (Causing death by negligence) of the IPC in the death of a student in the year 2014.
Nepal’s Shaan Prajapati, then 14-year-old, died in November 2014 due to medical negligence.
Harish C Pande, counsel for the complainant in the case told The New Indian, “The honourable CJM court found the principal of the Sherwood College Sandhu, warden Ravi Kumar and infirmary in-charge of the school Payal Paul guilty under section 304A of the Indian Penal Code. The court has awarded rigorous imprisonment of two years and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on each of them.”
All three persons were granted interim bail by the court.
Expressing satisfaction over the judgement Neena Shrestha, mother of Shaan Prajapati, wrote on her social media account, “Finally, truth has prevailed and the long-awaited justice has been served. It has been a very long painful, gruelling and arduous path of almost 8 years, for me, to keep up with this fight for justice. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Indian judicial system for a very fair verdict!!”
“Although this victory will not bring back my beloved son, it will certainly be a case to be remembered and upheld, especially by boarding schools, for timely treatment of children under their care, so that no parents will ever have to go through the ordeal that I go through every day and till the end my time,” she added.
The school has a list of illustrious alumni including Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, first Param Veer Chakra recipient Major Somnath Sharma, actor Amitabh Bachchan, Ram Kapoor, Dalip Tahil, Kabir Bedi, Indian politician Jitendra Prasad, Pakistani journalist Kaleem Omar and many more.
The case against school authorities under section 304 A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code was registered after the teenager’s death on the complaint of Shrestha.
The lower court took cognizance of the chargesheet and also issued summons to the three accused on January 14, 2016.
The chargesheet was filed by the Nainital district police against three including SS Sandhu in December 2015 in the Shaan Prajapati death case.
The 14-year-old student from Nepal died due to alleged negligence on the part of school authorities on November 14, 2014, in a private hospital in Noida.
Later, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Kathmandu on November 26-27 to attend the SAARC summit, protestors gathered in Kathmandu city at the route of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding banners written ‘Nyay Shaan Ko Laagi’ in the Nepali language which means ‘Justice For Shaan’ in English.
A series of protests broke out after Prajapati’s death, prompting women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi to request an inquiry by the human resources development ministry in a letter dated November 24, 2014.
The protests were organized simultaneously in Delhi, Lucknow, Nainital, Agra, Haldwani, Rudrapur, Kanpur, Bareilly, Bhopal, Dehradun, Kolkata, Chandigarh and many other cities.
The campaign titled, ‘Justice For Shaan’ was also launched on various social networking platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp.
In October 2015, the Uttarakhand government rejected the request for a Crime-Branch Crime Investigation Department (CBCID) investigation of the case. The plea for a CBCID probe was made by Sherwood by the principal.
In the year 2018, the then Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba intervened in the case.
Prajapati’s mother, Neena Shreshtha, had written to Deuba on January 19, 2018, requesting him to intervene in the matter and also alleged delay on the part of authorities in India.
Deuba wrote to the foreign ministry of Nepal on January 25, 2018, to look into the issue following which the Nepalese embassy in New Delhi took up the matter with Indian officials. The embassy then wrote to the Union ministry of external affairs.
