Police, public health centres occupy school building in Jehanabad

Jehanabad: A government middle school at Kalpa under Jehanabad block has been running under the shadow of guns for so many years in utter violation of the Supreme Court order against schools being used as police camps.
According to residents of Kalpa, the police post has been there for the last 25 years. In 1987, a police team was stationed on the school premises to combat the growing Naxalite menace in the region.A few years later, the picket was upgraded to a police outpost. On the initiative of the then SP Shahrukh Majid, work on a separate building to house the police outpost commenced. However, with Majid's exit, the work was left midway and still lying half-built.
Despite senior education department officials instructing Jehanabad district police administration to vacate the school, the police forces have been there. The outpost has seven SAP Jawans, 6 armed DAP constables, 10 homeguard jawans, one munshi, two ASIs and four SIs.
A schoolteacher Surendra Kumar said three blocks of the school building were occupied by the police while three rooms on the ground floor of western block are occupied by the health department to house an additional PHC. As a result, the schoolchildren are forced to sit on the verandah and take their midday meal in the open, Kumar added. Villagers also complained that their kids are afraid of going to school in police presence and demanded immediate shifting of the police outpost somewhere else.
Jehanabad SP Sayali Dhurat, however, denied that the police presence in the school was in anyway disturbing its normal working. "We shall make sure the police vacate the school premises as soon as the work on a separate building for the police outpost is finished," she said.