Taking a serious note of the incident which occurred in a school under the prestigious Visva-Bharati University, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has decided to issue a notice to the varsity seeking an explanation.
The girl's father, Manoj Mistry, lodged a complaint with Bolpur police station late last night alleging that his daughter was "forced to drink urine that was squeezed into her mouth from the wet bedsheet by the woman warden of Karabi girls hostel of the school".
Sources said the girl, a student of Patha Bhavan, the residential co-education primary and secondary school, was ill and had earlier too wetted her bed. Her mother had rung up the warden last night to inquire about her daughter.
The warden told her that her daughter was fine but had wetted the bed the previous night and that she had made her drink her own urine in the morning by wringing the bedsheet "as a treatment to stop the bad habit", the complaint said.
The shocked parents, who live at Makrampur, about five km from Santiniketan, rushed to the hostel at night accompanied by some other people and brought the girl back home before lodging the police complaint.
The Visva-Bharati authorities today formed a four-member committee to look into the matter. The panel would submit a report as soon as possible, they said.
The University authorities have lodged a counter-complaint with the police for the unauthorised entry of people into the hostel last night.
An NCPCR spokesperson said in Delhi, "We are taking cognisance of the incident. It is very sad that such incident has happened that too in an institute where Rabindranath Tagore lived. We will certainly have to make sure that the people involved are taken to task.
The spokesperson told PTI that the Commission had already issued guidelines to states banning corporal punishment in schools.
"We will be issuing a show-cause notice to the authorities seeking explanation. The notice will be sent tomorrow morning," the spokesperson said.
