On September 22, Police arrested the 58-year-old principal under POCSO charges and BNS sections related to murder and rape. Police said the accused attempted to rape the girl on their way to the school and, when she resisted, smothered her to death.

As the evening wore on, and the family realized that the girl had not turned up, they began asking around. The search ended a few hours later, on the premises of the primary school – her body was found in the backyard, in a small space that separated the school building from its boundary wall.

The Dahod police, which investigated the case, questioned multiple people – teachers, the child’s classmates, children in the village with whom she would often walk back home. No one had seen the girl in school that day.

The incident, and the subsequent arrest, has left the villagers in shock.

The walk to school

The school – the only government primary school in the vicinity – is in a neighboring village, around 750 meters from the girl’s village. Children mostly went to the school in groups – a 10-15-minute walk through a partially paved road, flanked by corn fields. If their teachers or principal happened to pass by, they would hitch a ride. Which is why, says the mother of the six-year-old girl, she did not think twice before sending her daughter with the principal that morning.

“All through her school life, she has regularly traveled with the teachers, including the principal. We never suspected anything about his behavior.”

Since the incident, the family’s mud house has seen a stream of visitors – police, political leaders, social workers, legal advisers, media persons and neighbors. To each of them, the girl’s parents narrate the events of that day: how the mother and daughter, her hair oiled and neatly plaited, had left for school that morning before spotting the principal’s car, how they grew worried when she did not get home, the hurried walk to school, the frantic search, the jump over the boundary wall of the locked premises, and then, the discovery of her body.

“We picked her up in our arms and rushed her to the hospital. At the PHC, they put an oxygen mask on her face. Then they referred us to the Limkheda hospital, but there, they told us our daughter had died,” says her father.

According to the police, the principal kept the girl’s body in the car the entire school day. Once the school emptied out, he allegedly dumped the body in the backyard and left. To throw the police off the scent, he allegedly put her bag inside her classroom and kept her slippers outside. The man has been remanded in police custody until September 27.

The girl’s mother recalls her conversation with the principal that afternoon. “I called him up after children from our village told me that they had not seen my daughter at school. The principal said he had dropped her at school, but did not know where she went. He hung up after that. I was surprised that he did not show any concern.”

On how they zeroed in on the principal, Dahod District Superintendent of Police Rajdeepsinh Zala says, “While the principal said he had dropped the child in school and that she had even attended the morning prayers, it struck us as odd that nobody else had seen her. . The school parking area is a 25×25-meter space and someone would have seen the child getting out of his car, but no one did. The teachers conducting the morning prayers said she was not present there. Her classmates as well as the mid-day meal in-charge confirmed she had not come to school that day.”

Zala says the technical surveillance of the principal’s phone revealed that he had taken “longer than usual” to cover the distance to school that morning. Besides, the accused claimed to have left the campus at 5 pm but his mobile location showed he was in the compound until after 6 pm, Zala adds.

“The autopsy report had also confirmed that the time of death was much earlier than when the body was discovered.”

‘Regretting sending her to school’

The family of marginal farmers is now questioning its decision to send the child to a school outside the village. “I am illiterate but what I earned from farming was enough to sustain my family. Had we not thought of educating her, she would perhaps have been alive today,” says the child’s grandfather.

Demanding death sentence for the accused, her father says, “What was my child’s fault? How could the man just dump her body in the backyard?”

A former sarpanch says villagers have decided not to entrust their children with outsiders. “We never imagined that teachers, whom we trust to look after our children, would turn into demons. The village elders have decided not to send younger children alone to school,” he says.

At the village where the school, and the principal’s house, are located, residents refuse to provide directions to the home of the “one who should not be defended”. Says a villager, “He can’t be forgiven… The administration should run a bulldozer over his house.”

The school, which runs out of two buildings, has 196 children and six teachers. The most senior teacher has now been handed over the charge of the principal.

Five days after the incident, not many had turned up at school. One of the teachers – all of them are now witnesses in the case – says, “It is indeed heartbreaking that an innocent child met such a tragic end. What has happened has tarnished the image of teachers. It is unpardonable.”

She looks across at the parking area, where the accused had allegedly parked his vehicle, which has now been sent for forensic examination. “The car had dark film covering its windows and windscreens. We had no idea that her body was inside throughout.”

Another teacher says they are trying their best not to bring up the case with the children. “We are not talking about it in school. Of course, the police were here and spoke to many children. The older children are aware of what happened but the younger ones do not understand that much,” says a teacher. “They only know that one of their classmates died and the principal has been taken away.”