Ritu Chhabra was shot dead by a student in her principal's office

CHANDIGARH: A Class XII boy walked into his principal’s office on Saturday morning and shot her three times with his father’s licensed revolver. The principal, 47-year-old Ritu Chhabra of Swami Vivekanand School at Yamunanagar in Haryana, succumbed to her wounds in hospital later in the day.

The 18-year-old assailant is believed to have been upset over Chhabra pulling him up for picking up fights with schoolmates and teachers and for his poor academic record.

After shooting the principal, the boy tried to run out of the school but was overpowered by parents and locals just outside the campus. A large number of parents were in the school to attend a parent-teacher meeting.

Besides booking the boy for murder, police have also arrested his father, a prominent moneylender of Yamunanagar, whose .32 bore Webley Scott revolver was used by the boy to kill Chhabra.

“On Saturday morning, the boy left home after telling his parents that he was going to his coaching class but landed up at the school instead,” said Yamunanagar SP Rajesh Kalia. “He went into the principal’s office at around 11.30am on the pretext of getting a form signed. At the time, Chhabra was alone in the cabin. The boy first walked out and then immediately went back in and fired four shots at Chhabra. While two bullets hit both her arms, a third hit her in the chest. The fourth bullet brushed past her head.”

Preliminary investigation revealed that the boy shot her from just 10 feet away. The school staff and the parents rushed Chhabra to a multi-specialty hospital run by the school management. She died three hours later due to excessive bleeding.

Kalia also said Chhabra taught economics to commerce stream students in the school and that the boy had scored poorly in the pre-board exams. As he had not deposited practical files on time he had gone to take her permission to allow him to submit the files late. The principal refused to accept his files.

This is the third case of a major crime being committed in a school in three months. In September last year, a seven-year-old boy was murdered, allegedly by his senior, in a school in Gurgaon’s Bhondsi. On January 16, a Class VII girl in Lucknow allegedly stabbed a Class I boy in the stomach and the chest in the school’s toilet. The boy survived.

Sources in the school told TOI that the boy was weak in studies and would not hesitate to argue with his teachers over petty matters. Chhabra had reprimanded him on several occasions, in class as well as in her office.

“The body has been sent for post-mortem. Both the boy and his father are being interrogated. The father has been booked under sections of the Arms Act and for negligence,” Kalia added.

Kamal Kamboj, the president of Swami Vivekananda Educational Society, which manages the school, said it was not true that she was harsh with students. “Our principal was shot and killed only because she had warned the student,” said Kamboj.

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