West Singhbhum district administration in Jharkhand has initiated a probe into all aspects of girl students of a government residential school walking 17km on Sunday night to lodge a complaint against their warden at the district headquarters.

West Singhbhum deputy commissioner Ananya Mittal told The Telegraph that district education officer (DEO) Lalan Kumar has been asked to probe “into all aspects of the allegations”. The hostel warden has been transferred on Wednesday.

“We have asked the DEO to probe not only into the complaints of the girls against the hostel warden of mental and physical harassment but also investigate how the girls could breach the government residential school security protocol and come out of the school premises and walk such a long distance at night.

“We will check the CCTV footage to verify the students’ claim. Apart from the complaint against the warden, we are also concerned about the security of the girls as anything could have happened to them on the way,” said Mittal.

The deputy commissioner said that they have also tightened security at all such government residential schools across the district.

According to reports, 61 girl students of the school claimed to have sneaked out of their hostel on Sunday late evening and trekked a distance of 17km, mostly deserted road, to reach the district headquarters Chaibasa on Monday morning to lodge a complaint with the DC about ‘atrocities’ committed by their hostel warden.

They managed to contact Singhbhum MP Geeta Koda who told the DC to look into the matter.

On the DC’s directive, district superintendent of education (DSE) Abhay Kumar Shil heard the grievances of the students and assured action after investigation before sending them back to the school in vehicles.

The students told the DSE and the local media that they were forced to eat stale food, clean toilets and pay fines if they miss assembly and were also beaten up by the warden if they protested.

They also alleged that the warden compelled the students to lie to senior officials when they visited the school for inspection.

Geeta Koda, on her part, expressed solidarity with the girl students. “It is very sad to hear children walking at night. I have asked the deputy commissioner to hear the grievances of the students and solve the issue at the earliest,” said Koda.