Barely a few days after a 17-year-old student of a Sakchi-based cradle fell victim to gun-shot injury in an accidental firing triggered by his classmate in the classroom, a 13-year-old boy was caught with a pistol at another English medium school in Sonari on Thursday afternoon.
The student, who was caught with a pistol, is a Class VIII student of RMS High School at Khuntadih in Sonari.
Though it was a rusted country-made pistol and was unloaded, the police have detained the student on the basis of an information lodged by school vice-principal Achla Srivastava.
Sonari police station officer-in-charge Budhram Oraon said they nabbed the student and recovered the pistol on getting a complaint from the vice-principal of RMS High School.
“We have taken the boy in custody after seizing the fire-arm and will take necessary action against him only after getting necessary instruction from the senior officers,” said Oraon.
He added they are trying to find out the source from whom the minor offender had procured the country-made pistol and also trying to find out the motive behind bringing the pistol to school.
The accused, who is son of Santosh Kumar Ojha, said, “I don’t know about the pistol as it was recovered from the desk of a girl student who sits next to me. I am innocent.”
But the police sources said the boy, resident of Khuntadih, had brought the pistol to the school and had shown it to as many as eight fellow students during the recession.
Vice-principal Srivastava said, “The student in question had showed the gun to some of his fellow students during the recess. After getting the complaint, we searched out the fire-arm from under a desk.”
Srivastava, when queried, claimed they used to carry out regular checking of bags of all the 900 students so as to find out whether any student had brought cell-phones or any other objectionable things.
The accused student is the only son of his parents who have two children. Santosh Kumar Ojha resides in Sonari, is a Tata Steel employee and works as an operator in New Bar Mill of the company.