New Delhi: A Delhi court has sentenced a man to life imprisonment for killing his schoolteacher in 2016, when the accused was a minor and a class XII student in a govt school in Nangloi. The judge said the murder was an affront to the “sacred and time-honoured” teacher-student relationship.Additional sessions judge Priya Mahendra said the murder “strikes at the very foundation of the sacred and time-honoured relationship between a teacher and a student, a bond accorded profound respect and sanctity under India’s longstanding cultural traditions and ethos.”On Sept 26, 2016, the Class XII student and his associate, who was also a minor, allegedly entered a classroom in the school when Hindi teacher Mukesh Kumar was on invigilation duty for an examination.They stabbed the teacher with a knife. He later died. The duo fled the school by scaling its boundary wall.Prosecutor Kamal Akhtar said the Class XII boy’s name had been struck off the school register due to continuous absence. The two students thought the Hindi teacher was responsible for the deletion and had previously threatened to “teach him a lesson.”The court described the stabbing as “surely abominable and despicable”.The defence pointed to the convict’s impoverished background and submitted that more than nine years had already lapsed since the incident. The court, however, noted that both accused “nursed a grudge” against the schoolteacher.The court concluded that “any act that undermines or erodes the trust, dignity, and mutual obligations inherent in such a relationship constitutes a serious affront to the fundamental values upon which this venerable institution rests.”
