13-year-old student dies as toilet roof collapses

KOLAR: On Wednesday morning S Jyothsna, a 13 year old student of the Morarji Desai Residential School, had died after the roof and a portion of the wall of her school toilet had collapsed on her in Mulbagal, Kolar district. She was the only daughter of Shankarappa and Vijayamma, residing in Bisanahalli.

The school, which comes is under the social welfare department of the government, has 162 students from classes 6 to 10. The students told that minutes after Jyothsna went to the toilet, the roof and the wall collapsed. “We called the emergency service and started clearing the debris to trace the girl,” school authorities said.

The police had said that, with multiple injuries, Jyothsna was rushed to a local hospital where she succumbed.

K Rathnaiah, DDPI Kolar, inspected the school building and confirmed that it was because of the poor quality of construction. “It’s a rented structure and the owner had constructed six toilets by raising the compound wall. The foundation of the newly constructed wall and roof were weak. We will file a police complaint against the owner for the poor work,” he said.

Principal MV Bharathi said initially that the school was to come up at the Devarayasamudra, located near Kolar. “But It was shifted here as the building at Devarayasamudra was not in good condition. On Wednesday, the high school students had unit tests and teachers were busy distributing questions papers when the incident took place,” she said.