teachers

RNS Vidyaniketan

resort

The manager told me that the resort owner and he had paid the school Rs 50,000 and if I wanted more money I could go to the resort –Ramachandra, father of the child

Headmistress,ofand the Odyssey’s manager and owner booked after techie’s complaintA day out from school to a resort ended up on a bad note for a seven-year-old girl, who fractured her thigh after she fell off a play equipment at the Odyssey resort in Kanakapura last Monday. And what is more, the child’s father has also alleged that the resort paid the school Rs 50,000 to hush up the incident.The child is a second standard student of the RNS Vidyaniketan on Chord Road in Vijayanagar. Her father Ramachandra, a software engineer and a resident of Basaveshwara Layout in Chandra Layout, told BM that both the school management and the resort were insensitive towards the incident.The school had organised a trip for students to the resort on February 3, a Monday. “The collected Rs 750 for a child. I dropped my daughter to the school around 8 am and around 11.30 am, I received a phone call from a teacher, informing me that my daughter was injured and asking me to come to Manipal Hospital in Malleswaram,” Ramachandra said.The doctors told the father that the child’s right thigh bone was broken and she would need to undergo surgery the following day.The child’s parents tried to know more about how she had fallen off the equipment. They learnt that the school had taken three buses full of children (more than 150 kids) and as the kids were crowding the resort, its employees were nudging the kids from top of the bouncy castle and slide (an air-filled play equipment), which is when the child fell.“We don’t know whether she fell on the balloon or the ground,” Ramachandra said. He added that they came to know that another eighth standard student too was hurt and received first aid at a hospital. The child underwent surgery on Tuesday and was back home on Wednesday. Ramachandra said the school had initially taken his child to a hospital, and stated that they would take care of medical expenses, once she was discharged they were nowhere to be seen. “I had to call up the resort for the CCTV footage. The resort manager said that it was a newly started resort, so they did not have CCTV installed,” Ramachandra said.“The manager told me that the resort owner and he had paid the school Rs 50,000 and if I wanted more money, I could come with the school principal to the resort and he could speak to his boss about the money,” added Ramachandra. Ramachandra had to spend over Rs 1.75 lakh more than his insurance covered for the surgery. He is now taken off from work to take care of his daughter.He has approached the Chandra Layout police and filed a complaint. The police have booked the RNS Vidyaniketan headmistress and teachers along with the Odyssey resort manager and owner under IPC section 338 - causing grievous hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others.Meanwhile, secretary of the school Madhukar M Shetty told BM that the school takes utmost care of children. “There has not been a single incident like this over the past 26 years. Before going for a picnic or an educational trip, a team of our teachers visit the venue and analyse if the area is student-friendly and non-hazardous. We select three to four such venues from which we finalise on one,” Shetty said.He said around 15 teachers were managing 150 students, who were in small groups at the 15 to 20 different play equipment at the resort.“The child was rushed to the hospital in the resort general manager’s car. On the way, the child’s father was informed and he opted for Manipal hospital in Malleswaram as it is closer to their house. The school management had promised that it would bear the medical expenses, but a man claiming to be relative of victim’s father created a ruckus over the incident and filed a police complaint,” Shetty added.