Despite a 5000-page chargesheet against those involved in the infamous 2004 Kumbakonam school fire which burnt alive 94 children, 11 persons went scotfree after being dropped by the Government from the accused list. Kumar Chellappan reports from Chennai that even though 10 years have gone by, safety norms for educational institutions are being flouted on a regular basis
When N Mohammed Ali, principal district and sessions judge, Thanjavur, sentenced Pulavar R Palanisamy (85), founder of the Sri Krishna Middle School, Kumbakonam, Saraswathi (81), Palanisamy’s wife, school correspondent Santhanalakshmi (52), Palanisamy’s adopted daughter and school headmistress, and seven others for prison terms ranging from life to six months , the crowd at the court hall was shocked. Not because of their love for Palanisamy and others who were convicted but because 11 others had been acquitted.
O July 16, 2004, a massive fire broke out in the thatched kitchen on the first floor of the school where the noon meal was being prepared. Ninety-four children in the age group of five to 11 were charred to death. It took more than 10 years for the court to pronounce the verdict. While 10 accused where punished, the acquittal of 11 persons equally or more responsible for the fire, were let off.
Had the Government not dropped the names of the six district elementary educational officers, the then municipal commissioner, the town planning officer, the two tehsildars and the elementary education director done their job, the parents would not have lost their children. It was the school management’s greed for money and avarice of the officials which turned an auspicious Friday into a lifelong nightmare for parents. Conservative Tamilians consider Friday auspicious.
Though it’s been over a decade since they lost their children Anand (10) and Praveen (8), the grief of Inbaraj and Christy has only increased. “Had they been alive, they would have been in college. Till we breathe our last, we will not be able to come out of this grief. Over the years, our sorrow has intensified,” Inbaraj says. Counseling and prayer meetings have not helped much.
What shocked Inbaraj was the acquittal of officials he believes are responsible for the tragedy. “It is not because we lost our children that we want the court to punish them. They should be punished so that others don’t not repeat the crime,” he adds.
“I left my son Neelakantan (8) in school in the morning only to learn about his death some hours later,” Jayalakshmi says.
Inbaraj and Jayalakshmi do not belong to the creamy layer of society. They are ordinary Government employees and small time traders from small-town Kumbakonam. “We had dreams about our children and so had put them in this English medium school,” Christy says. She was among the 94 parents who had been bowled over by Palanisamy’s sweet talk. “He introduces himself as Pulavar (poet) but we are yet to see any poems penned by him. As it turns out that he is a crook posing as an educational entrepreneur,” a parent said on condition of anonymity.
Parents’ anguish can be understood if one visits the flex board installed in front of the now defunct school. The board sports pictures of all the 94 children who lost their lives in the fire.
“It was blatant violation of laws by the school management and Government authorities. The school founder was busy making fast money while the greedy officials danced to his tunes,” Rajaram, an activist based at Kumbakonam, says.
The Sri Krishna Girls Higher Secondary School, Sri Krishna Aided Primary School and Saraswathi Nursery School were functioning from the same building which itself was a violation of rules.
“When the fire broke out in the thatched shed which was being used as the noon meal kitchen, the teachers who were supposed to protect the children fled, leaving the children to die. There were more than 200 children in the first-floor classrooms at the time of the fire which broke out at 10.30 am. There were no exit points for the children to escape,” Rajaram recalls.
Suryakumari, mother of Karthika, a student who succumbed to burns, says that had the teachers not fled, many lives could have been saved. The fire became devastating only because the classrooms on the first floor too were thatched sheds, she points out.
More than an educationist, Palanisamy is a politician. “He shuttles between the DMK and AIADMK, depending which party is in power. Till 1990, his was a Tamil medium school. My daughters studied in his school in Tamil medium,” Prof G Sadagopan, former economics professor with the Government Arts College, Kumbakonam, says. He adds that Palanisamy launched the English medium school with the sole intention of making a fast buck. “Had he started the English medium school in another premises, this accident would not have happened. His aim was to reap rich dividends with minimum investment,” Prof Sadagopan says.
Most children who lost their lives were studying in Tamil medium classes. “All of them were from poor families. The fees for Tamil medium was low,” he states.
The court has ordered Palanisamy to pay Rs 51.65 lakh as fine, out of which Rs 50,000 each would be paid to the kin of the 94 deceased children, Rs 25,000 to parents of 15 children who were grievously injured and Rs 10,000 each to those who suffered minor injuries. Though the police had included the names of 24 persons in the FIR, the Government dropped the names of an elementary education officer, a tehsildar and an employee of the directorate of elementary education. A comprehensive, 5000-page chargesheet was filed by the police. But in the end, these people walked to freedom.
Even as the day of the verdict neared, most parents kept their agony to themselves and refused to make any comments. The few who spoke were unanimous that it was the greed of the management which had triggered the catastrophe.
“An occasional inspection to check whether the management was following safety norms would have averted this disaster,” Muruganantham, whose son Venkatesh was among the victims, tells you wiping his tears.
Those sentenced besides Palanisamy, Saraswathi and Santhanalakshmi include Vijayalakshmi (noon meal organiser), Vasanthi (cook) Balaji (elementary education officer), Sivaprakasam (an assistant at the elementary education office), Thandavan (officer in the district education office), Durairaj (assistant with DEEO) and Jayachandran (chartered engineer).
Eight officials and three teachers were absolved of all charges. “Most of those convicted or acquitted lead a luxurious life. Except for the teachers and the staff of the noon meal scheme, all others are unbelievably well off as Government employees,” a parent closely following the case says. The fire, he adds, has in no way affected the living standards of the accused. “Parents who lost their children are leading a pathetic life both financially and emotionally. But the accused were confident and bold,” he says.
Justice K Sampath, who was appointed as the Commission of Inquiry, too, made startling revelations. “The main reason for such a heavy casualty was the packing of the aided primary school with children from the other two schools to mislead the inspecting authorities into believing that the teacher-student ratio was correct and the attendance for the noon meal centre true. The management is responsible for the high casualty. The accident could have been averted if only the management had shown concern for the welfare of the children,” Justice Sampath said in his report to the Government.
Interestingly, the Commission of Inquiry came down heavily on S Paramasivam, the tehsildar. “He acted in the most dishonest manner by granting licence under the Tamil Nadu Public Buildings (licensing) Act, 1965. It is very likely that he did not visit the school at all. Otherwise, he would have seen the thatched structure which had been there since 1982, was there in 1999 and 2000 and also in 2004 when the accident took place,” the report says. The Government dropped his name from the list of the accused.
The commission concluded: “The gruesome accident and the consequent 94 deaths are an indictment of the management, the noon meal centre staff, the revenue authorities, the chartered engineer, the municipal authorities and the Education Department officials who refused to recognise their obligations towards the children in housing or accommodating them in structures which were death traps. It was an accident due to the carelessness of the noon meal staff, the callous indifference and criminal insensitivity of the management running the schools compounded and abetted by departments which failed to implement and enforce the laws and safety standards.”
However, the Kumbakonam school fire was not an isolated incident. The year 2004 began on a disastrous note in Tamil Nadu. The January 23, 2004 (that too on Friday) fire at the Padmapriya Marriage Hall in Srirangam claimed the lives of 57 persons, including the bridegroom. The fire was caused by a short circuit in the wire connecting a video camera to the power point. “This lit up the thatched roof set up on the first floor and the fire engulfed the marriage hall. The width of the staircase leading to the first floor was a mere 2.5 feet and this led to a stampede,” says an eyewitness.
On June 14, 2012, the principal court judge sentenced Ramasamy (owner of the marriage hall) to two years’ rigorous imprisonment. Selvam, contractor of the thatched shed, died before the judgment was delivered. Dharmarajan, the videographer, and Sadagopan, the hall manager, were got one-year jail. Interestingly, no Government or local body authority which had certified the safety of the marriage hall were charged. Where are the Government officials and local body authorities who presided over the procedures to approve and clear the proposal for constructing the marriage hallIJ For the Kumbakonam fire, the chartered engineer has been convicted. But many people went scotfree in the Srirangam fire tragedy.
Immediately after the Kumbakonam tragedy, the then Government ordered the closure of all schools which did not meet the safety requirements. The court granted the managements a stay. Even today one can see many schools where there are no safety guidelines. “The easiest way to make money is through schools,” Sadagopan says.
“You cannot expect anything better than this when bootleggers and crooks masquerade as educationists. The education system is in a mess. There is a price for everything, including granting licenses to schools, colleges and professional colleges,” G Viswanathan, chancellor, Vellore Institute of Technology, and chairman, Education Promotion Society of India, says.
Tamil Nadu is the only State in the country which does not have a Navodaya Vidyalaya, a scheme launched by the Union Human Resources Ministry to make quality education available to students belonging to rural areas. “The differences between the State and the Centre over the three-language policy is the reason for Tamil Nadu not having a Navodaya Vidyalaya. This has helped private educationists in making a fast buck without proper infrastructure,” K Kannan, a farmer leader from Cuddalore, tells you.
The collapse of a multi-storied building in a Chennai suburb in June this year, which claimed 62 lives, is another indicator to things to come. All rules dealing with safety and security of a building are blatantly violated in connivance with people in high places. “There is no system in place to know whether the buildings meet the safety norms. Whenever an accident occurs, the agencies concerned put the blame on each other,” MG Devasahayam, former IAS officer who was appointed by the Madras High Court as a member of the committee to monitor the safety of buildings in Chennai, says. When the Chief Minister openly declares that rules are being violated by builders, there is nothing much left to say in this connection, isn’t itIJ
A mint called schools
School is a place which moulds one’s character, future and everything. But the Kumbakonam Sri Krishna School was described as a death trap by none other than Justice K Sampath, who probed the reasons behind the July 2004 inferno which swallowed 94 precious lives. Parents of children whose lives were snuffed out in the fire told the commission that they had time and again pleaded with the school founder about the absence of infrastructure. But Palanisamy paid scant respect to the pleas as these parents were from the lower strata of society. Whether it be Inbaraj, a daily wager who lost both his sons in the accident, Alagesan, a rickshaw puller who too lost both of his sons, they were intelligent enough to understand the seriousness of the problem and warn the school management.
But Palanisamy had only one intention — to make more money with no investments. The Commission came down heavily on him for his greed: “The main reason for such a heavy casualty was the packing of the aided primary school with children from the other two schools to mislead the inspecting authorities into believing that the teacher-student ratio was correct and the attendance for the noon meal centre was true. Children unconnected with the aided school were stacked like sardines with the ulterior purpose of boosting the attendance,” the Commission says.
It is heartless to ask Alagesan and Inbaraj what they feel about life more than a decade after the tragedy. “Don’t ask them anything like that. Their sorrow could not be controlled by counseling. So long as we have former rack shop owners and bootleggers as educationists, you can expect much more Kumbakonam type tragedies,” said Remadevi, a Chennai activist who frequently interacts with parents who lost their children in the fire accident.
Remadevi is not exaggerating. One of the leading educationists who is the chancellor of a university was said this in his convocation address: “I have four daughters and all of them are girls.” The likes of him rule because they finance political parties.
Universities and schools are money spinners, especially when you know the tricks of the game. Children from one school are temporarily shifted to another on inspection days by Government officials so that teachers of Government-aided schools continue to get their salary from the State exchequer.
A private medical college facing a CBI inquiry had developed an ingenious method to hoodwink officials of the Medical Council of India who would come for periodic inspections. On the day of the inspection, the medical college management would pack the hospital beds with “patients” from nearby villages. The patients were paid daily bata of Rs 200 and biryani for lunch. The modus operandi varies depending upon the size of the educational institution.
