Policemen lived in Bhuleshwar BMC school for 5 years; issued notice to vacate, says civic official

Mumbai: Several policemen resided in a BMC school in Bhuleshwar’s Gulalwadi for five years while students from standards one to seven attended classes on the premises.

When contacted, deputy municipal commissioner Prachi Jambhekar said, “These rooms were given to the police force during the Covid pandemic and we are giving them a notice to clear it.” Jambekhar shared with TOI an image on Thursday evening showing that the rooms in the school had been cleared.

A teacher at the school said, “We asked the cops many times not to roam around in their underwear with so many children around, but they didn’t listen.” The school is managed by an NGO and has a total of 47 students across Gujarati and Marathi mediums.

A senior police officer confirmed to TOI: “Two rooms in the school were allotted to the SRPF. The SRPF personnel deployed at different places used it as their barracks.”

The matter first came to light when Chaitali Doshi, an independent educational activist now aligned with the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), posted on social media about the potential safety hazard of having adult men living around school-going children.

Doshi said, “I went to the school to survey its condition when one of the NGO workers working in the school told me about the policemen staying inside.

When I entered the room, I saw one policeman lying in his underwear, and this was while classes were in session right beside them.” The cops were originally accommodated on the third and fourth floors of the school. However, due to construction work on the upper floors, they were shifted to the ground floor, next to the classrooms.

Doshi added, “There was garbage like derelict furniture piled up in classrooms, and a library which scarcely had one book that did not have its pages ripped or wasn’t completely covered in dust and grime.”

Classrooms have also been given out to govt officials conducting SIR work, while a room has been allotted to govt officials conducting a polio eradication drive. Doshi said, “The school is in a horrifying condition. On top of it, so much of the building has been given out for non-academic work.”

(Inputs by Mateen Hafeez)