A division bench of the high court on Thursday declined to accept an appeal by the headmaster of a school in Narendrapur and a few others for a stay on an arrest order in connection with an alleged attack on teachers of the school.
The headmaster also sought a stay on an order barring his entry into the school.
After hearing the pleas by the appellants, the division bench, headed by Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty, declined to issue a stay on the orders passed by Justice Biswajit Basu of the court.
The bench said the case would continue to be heard by Justice Basu.
The refusal to accept the appeal came after the lapse of the two-day period Justice Basu had given the police to arrest the accused named in the FIR in connection with the alleged assault on teachers by outsiders last Saturday.
The headmaster is among those named in the FIR as accused.
“Separate police teams have been looking for the accused in Narendrapur and Baruipur. Apart from the headmaster, the FIR names two other members of the local panchayat. All of them are untraceable,” said an officer in the Baruipur police district.
“We are on the job and a dedicated team is carrying out electronic surveillance.”
On Saturday, a group of around 20 youths had allegedly barged into classrooms and attacked a few teachers of the school. The staff room was ransacked and the teachers were allegedly kept locked inside a room before police rescued them.
The attack followed allegations that a student of the school had been raped by a teacher and the institution had kept the incident under wraps.
A section of the teachers had told the police that they believed that the youths had arrived at the behest of the headmaster. They couldn’t have entered through the school’s gates without the headmaster’s approval, they had alleged.
The teachers had said the attack was aimed at forcing them to withdraw the complaint of irregularities lodged by them against the headmaster. The headmaster denied the allegations.
Justice Basu had ordered the headmaster not to enter the school till the Madhyamik exams are over and given the police 24 hours to arrest all accused named in the FIR.
On Tuesday, the judge gave two more days to the police to round up the accused following an appeal by the superintendent of the Baruipur police district, Palash Chandra Dhali.
The state secondary education board on Wednesday suspended the headmaster.