By Scroll Staff
A portion of a school being constructed in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district was bulldozed by the authorities on Tuesday following rumours that it was an unauthorised madrasa, The Indian Express reported.
A resident, Abdul Naeem, had invested nearly Rs 20 lakh in borrowed money and from family savings to construct the school in Dhaba village, the newspaper reported.
Naeem was building the school for students from nursery to Class 8 because families from the village and nearby Adivasi hamlets had to send their children to institutes several kilometres away. He had filed an application with the state school education department on December 30.
However, rumours had begun to spread since last week that a madrasa was being built in the area, The Indian Express reported.
“I had decided to construct the school on my private land so that my village can progress and some people can study,” Naeem told the newspaper. “Senior officials claimed that we were doing wrong things here.”
Naeem said there was no basis to claims that a madrasa was being built there. “This is a village with only three Muslim families,” he said. “How would a madrasa even function here? And the building wasn’t even complete – no classes, no students.”
On Sunday, the panchayat issued Naeem a notice ordering him to demolish the school, claiming that he did not have the permission to build the structure. The officials at the panchayat office allegedly refused to accept his response and told him to return later.
Following protests by residents, the panchayat issued a no-objection certificate for the school on Monday, NDTV reported. The sarpanch was quoted as stating that she had not received any complaints alleging that the structure was an unauthorised madrasa.
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