KOLKATA: A toddler here has been left battered and traumatized after a brutal thrashing from his woman tutor at his home. But for a CCTV camera, the child's family would never have known about it.

The tutor, Pooja Singh, kept insisting that all was fine inside the locked room even as the worried mother was banging on the door to ask why he was screaming.

Pooja has gone into hiding. It was only her third class with the three-and-a-half-year-old child. Psychiatrists TOI spoke to were concerned that she may be a serial offender. The CCTV footage was beamed by news channels on Wednesday triggering outrage across the country.

Singh was hired by the family on July 15 to teach the child at their Lake Town home. As soon as she arrived on Tuesday she told the boy's mother to leave the room because her presence was "disturbing the boy's concentration". Pooja then locked the room despite the boy's pleas to keep it open so that her mother could see him.

The CCTV camera captures the terrified boy running towards the locked door to escape. Pooja is seen kicking him repeatedly even as the child begs for mercy. Shaking like a leaf, he is forced to sit on the bed. The teacher then gets up and opens an almirah. Seizing this opportunity the child again tries to run out of the room. This time the teacher grabs him, flips him upside down, hurls him on the bed and continues to batter him.

"I heard my baby cry out and sensed something was not right. I asked the teacher to open the door but she replied that I need not worry as my son was crying to avoid studies," said his mother.

Not convinced, she switched on the CCTV monitor and was petrified to see the torture being inflicted on the little boy in the very next room. She started banging on the door but the tutor continued to insist that everything was all right.

"I nearly fainted on seeing the torture. The teacher refused to open the door despite my desperate pleas, saying she was taking care of the child. She opened the door only after I screamed that I could see her inhuman behaviour on camera," said the mother. She rushed to the boy who was bleeding from the forehead. While she was busy nursing the wounds, Pooja picked up her bag and fled.

The child's mother then called up husband who was at the airport to take a flight to Russia on a business trip. He rushed back home. That night Pooja's husband Rohit Singh landed up at their doorstep. "Rohit came with a few other men and threatened the family not to file a police complaint," said Rakesh Singh, a family friend.

Pooja went underground as soon as the footage was screened on TV around 2pm on Wednesday. A half-hour later she took a call from the media and denied that her husband had threatened the family. "I know the pain the little child must be going through because of my torture. When I realized my mistake we went to apologize and not to threaten," she said. After that, she switched off her phone.

Police teams are out looking for her. They went to the Baguiati address she had given the family but it turned out to be wrong. "How long can she run? We will track her down soon," said a police officer. Local MLA Sujit Bose visited the family on Wednesday evening and demanded that the teacher be booked for the "heinous crime". A team from the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights also visited the family.