A wail pierces the muggy and rain-heavy air in Piplodi. Mournful and gut-wrenching, the wail drowns out everything – noise of the ‘Rajasthan Sarkar’ cars rumbling through the village, the chattering groups of policemen milling around, and the hordes of VVIPs and media persons that have descended on it.
Piplodi in Rajasthan’s Jhalawar is a village in mourning. On Friday morning, disaster struck in this usually quiet village of 350 houses when the roof of a government school caved during morning prayers, killing seven students of the school and injuring 15 others – 11 critically.
At 7 am on a rainy Saturday morning, the village held funerary rites for its lost children, attended by state government officials, politicians and the media. On the roads leading up to the village, rows and rows of government and media cars queued up, with groups of policemen stationed every 20 km “to prevent any violence and unwarranted media attention”, according to one official.
Five teachers have been suspended after the incident and an FIR has been filed against them. The Rajasthan government has also announced that the school will be rebuilt and that the victims will be given a compensation of Rs 10 lakh.
In one of the houses, Kunti Devi lets out a grief-stricken howl. She’s lost both her children to the incident and can’t have any more, a neighbour tells The Indian Express.
“Both her kids died such a miserable death. Meena, 8, was a student of Class 7 and Kanha, 6, studied in Class 1. Their bodies had to be dragged out of the debris. Her husband Mohan has been able to speak since it happened,” the neighbour says.
In the house just opposite the school — which now stands in ruins — Harish’s mother and grandmother are still deep in shock. Grandmother Bhanwari fainted after hearing of the roof collapse, a relative says.
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Harish’s family mourning for their oldest son. (Express photo/Parul)
While eight-year-old Harish was killed, his younger brother Vikram is among the children undergoing treatment at Manoharthana Primary Health Centre (CHC) and is stated to be stable.
“We heard a loud crash, and ran to the school. There was chaos everywhere and we didn’t know what to do,” Harish’s aunt Sambi says. “Then other villagers came and helped clear the debris. I thank God that at least one child is safe.”
According to sources, heavy rain that the district had been witnessing in the last few weeks could have eaten into the foundation of the structure. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the Rajasthan government has constituted special permanent committees to review the safety of government schools, hostels, colleges, medical and other government buildings to ensure repairs of unsafe structures are completed before June 15 every year.
Meanwhile, another permanent committee has been set up in the state for safety assessment and repairs of government buildings.
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Jhalawar Collector Ajay Singh Rathore, who visited the village Saturday with Superintendent of Police Amit Budania, says a probe panel is investigating the incident. “The school will be temporarily moved to a safer building until the new one is built,” he says.
But for victims’ families, neither these words nor the ex-gratia announcement offers any comfort. Patwari Bai can’t get the image of her son’s broken head out of her mind. Her 10-year-old son Kundan was declared dead soon after he was taken to the hospital.
People protest in front of Jhalawar hospital on Friday. (Express)
His sister Laxmi, a Class 10 student, was sitting by the school gate when the roof began to slide downward. “She made it out but her brother couldn’t,” Patwari Bai says, sobbing.
At the Manoharthana CHC, doctors recall how parents ran into the hospital Friday morning carrying their injured and bleeding children. “Five students were brought dead. We told the parents that students are no more but they refused to believe it. But we had to prioritise the injured,” he says.
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Those who escaped can’t get over the panic and the trauma of the day. Varsha, 14, recalls how she spotted some chinks falling from the ceiling and alerted her teacher.
“We asked the teachers to let us out but they chided us and told us to stay inside. Suddenly, the building collapsed but since I was in the courtyard, I could go outside. I ran to alert others,” she says.
Around 8.30 am, students had just arrived and were on their way to morning prayers when the roof of a room in the school building gave way. (PTI)
Sisters Chinka and Anjana managed to run to safety with only some minor injuries. But the cost of this lucky escape is steep: the incident has deeply scarred Chinka, and her father is afraid to take her back home.
“Chinka can’t stop crying about what happened,” their father Badri Lal Bheel says as he watches over his daughter at CHC. “She keeps saying ‘how could this happen’. I will not be taking my daughter back to the village until things settle down over there. She won’t make it otherwise.”
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Chinka isn’t the only one haunted by what happened. A few beds away at CHC, Raj Kiran refuses to go back to school.
“If I ever go back, I’ll hear voices and see their (classmates’) faces. I will leave my studies but won’t go back. The school has to be at a different place,” she says.
