The Navi Mumbai police arrested a baby caretaker and owner of a creche at Kharghar after a video footage showed that a 10–month–old girl was beaten up and kicked by the caretaker in the school on Thursday.
Identifying the arrested caretaker as Afsana Shaikh and owner of Purva Play School and Creche Priyanka Nikam (34), a day care centre for children at Kharghar in Navi Mumbai, the police said on Friday that the incident came to light, after the CCTV footage of the creche was analysed by the police and the infant’s parents.
After they registered an FIR against Afsana and Priyanka, the police produced the two before a Panvel court on Thursday afternoon. While Afsana was remanded in judicial custody till 14 days, Priyanka was released on bail against a cash surety.
Afsana and Priyanka have been charged under under Sections 325 (voluntarily causing grevious hurt) and 34 (Acts done by several persons) of the IPC and section 23 of Child Protection of Children Act 2000.
Having resumed work after her maternity leave, mother Ruchita Sinha, who works as a Human Resources Deputy manager in a private firm at Chembur, had dropped her child Ritisha at Purva Playschool and Creche on November 21. The concerned mother kept calling the nursery every half an hour to ascertain if her baby was okay.
When she went pick up her child in the evening, Ruchita found to her horror that her daughter was in a semi-conscious condition with a blood clot on the head. Upon inquiries, Priyanka told her and husband that the child had hurt herself.
However, upon a medical examination conducted at a hospital in Navi Mumbai, it was found that child Ritisha had a skull fracture and a possible internal brain injury and her condition was somewhat critical.
With the school authorities not willing to disclose as to what had contributed to the injuries suffered by the child, Ritisha’s parents lodged a complaint with the Khargar police station.
A subsequent examination of the CCTV footage of the school showed that the caretaker or made Afsana assaulting the child and even banging her on the floor.
Meanwhile, Ritisha is undergoing treatment for the head injuries. Taking serious cognizance of the incident, Maharashtra’s Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde said that the State Government was making it mandatory for play schools to install CCTVs on their premises, to ensure against recurrence of Kharghar-like incidents.
“We have decided to make it compulsory to install CCTVs at play schools, to avoid recurrence of such incidents,” Pankaja said.