The Madras High Court today denied bail to two students of a polytechnic college whose teacher committed suicide after they attacked him brutally, observing that granting the relief would send wrong signals to the teaching community.
"Giving them bail will send wrong signals to the teaching community which is already seething under the pain of academic pressures," Justice P M Prakash of the Madurai bench of the High Court said, rejecting the bail pleas of the two students.
He said the teaching community would feel terribly let down if courts treat such delinquencies with kid gloves.
The judge said the petitioners had been arrested only on April 17 and rejected the plea that they were only students.
"Alas! The petitioners have not behaved like students at all. Indian culture revers the teacher and venerates him," the judge observed.
The two petitioners, students of the college in Tirunelveli, had picked up a quarrel with Prof Subramaiam after he sent them out following a quarrel when they came late for an examination on April 16 last. Later, the duo, along with four of their friends, allegedly assaulted him and also the wife of a college driver, who intervened in the quarrel.
Police later arrested six students, including the two petitioners and charged them with various offences under IPC.
"Instead of feeling remorseful and regretful for coming late to the college, this group of students, in a cinematic style, abducted their teacher to a godforsaken place and had brutally attacked him without even considering his age. Though he survived the attack, he was not able to digest the humiliation and so he took the extreme step of committing suicide," the judge noted.
If persons of such criminal propensities were released on bail, "I am afraid, they would go about tampering with the evidence with impunity," he said.
