Never misbehaved with any woman: Principal suspended for ‘misbehaving' during Singapore tour pleads innocence
Placed on suspension on Monday for his alleged misbehaviour with a lady tour guide during a visit to Singapore for an official teachers' training programme, the accused principal of a Fazilka school has pleaded his innocence. 'I am being defamed without knowing details of the full incident. As a teacher, I never think of misbehaving with a woman.'
Speaking to The Indian Express, Gautam Khurana, principal of the School of Eminence, Jalalabad, Fazilka district, said that he had only objected to an extra class on Chinese language, because even teachers had undergone an eight-hour-long full-day exhaustive training session. 'Just because I objected to an extra class after a full-day exhaustive training session from 9 am to 5 pm, as I was feeling nauseous and tired, it has been projected as misbehaviour with a lady guide. I did not even speak to the tour guide directly.'
On May 19, Punjab Education Secretary Anindita Mitra suspended Khurana.
According to the suspension order, the action was being taken as Khurana 'misbehaved with a lady tour guide during the teachers' training programme in Singapore'.
The suspension order by Mitra came close on the heels of Punjab Director of Education (Secondary) Gurinder Singh Sodhi's May 9 order, stating that Khurana was 'being let off with a stern warning to be careful in future after he replied to the show-cause notice and the matter was being treated as 'daakhil daftar' (meaning no further action will be taken on it)'.
The suspension orders went viral on social media.
'We went to Singapore in March,' Khurana told The Indian Express. 'On that day, we had a 9 am to 5 pm training session. In the evening, we were taken on a jungle safari. All teachers were exhausted. On the way back from the jungle safari, our bus broke down. Within a few minutes, the atmosphere inside the bus turned humid, and I started feeling nauseous. In such a situation, some teachers started requesting the tour guide, a Singaporean, to teach them the Chinese language. It continued for some minutes, but some teachers, like me, sitting in the back seats, got irritated. I objected to it and said that when we had already completed the day's training, why were we taking an extra class on Chinese on the bus? That's all,' Khurana said.
'I commented on teachers, not the lady guide. I did not speak to her directly, but the SCERT director, Madam, who was leading us, objected and asked, 'Who said this?' I got a little scared and realised I should not have said this. Since I was feeling nauseous, I moved out of the bus and started moving around to feel better. As the new bus came, we reached the hotel, and no discussion was held that day. I did not misbehave with the guide even once,' Khurana claimed.
Khurana said the next day, the matter was again raised by the SCERT director and some teachers, stating that the incident should not have happened. 'I immediately sensed the gravity of the situation and apologised to the SCERT director and the entire group of teachers. I told them that I never meant to hurt anyone and had only objected to the extra class as I was feeling unwell, suffocated and nauseous in that broken bus. As we returned from the tour, I received a show-cause notice on March 25, to which I replied,' Khurana said. 'The lady guide has not filed any complaint against me, and I did not speak to her directly. So, how could this be misbehaviour with her,' he questioned.
Notably, Government Senior Secondary School (Boys), Jalalabad, is now a School of Eminence, headed by Khurana as the principal. However, the secretary's suspension order avoided mentioning the School of Eminence and addressed Khurana as the principal of GSSS, Jalalabad. 'This was possibly done to avoid tarnishing the image of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government's ambitious School of Eminence project,' said a teacher.
Khurana said that he was shocked to see the suspension order giving 'misbehaviour with a lady guide' as the reason for his suspension. 'As a routine practice, the reason for suspension is never mentioned in the letter until the inquiry is completed and the chargesheet is not issued. I have been declared an accused without a chargesheet. I never misbehaved with any woman. Expressing one's discomfort and health issues is not misbehaviour. Despite that, I apologised,' he said.
'There is not a single blot on my teaching career. I have earned this respect by sheer hard work. I don't have any political connections to save myself,' he added.
Mitra, however, said the action against the principal was initiated based on the complaint received from the SCERT director.
Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab.
Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab.
She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on 'Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers' had won accolades at IIMC.
She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012.
Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab.
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