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A YEAR 5 student who suffered heat stroke after being forced to stand under the sun for nearly three hours as punishment has been officially classified as a person with disabilities (PWD) by doctors on Friday.
Dinesh Muthal, the lawyer representing the family, said the hospital confirmed the status of the 11-year-old.
"The hospital, where the doctor treating the boy had earlier deliberately delayed the assessment and approval of the registration (of the disability status) for another two months, has now given the approval (for the boy to be registered as a PWD).
"He was assessed to have an 'intellectual disability' now.
"The parents will now go to the Social Welfare Department to complete their registration for their son," Dinesh told The Malaysian Insight.
On April 30, the student from a school in Ampang was punished by his teacher along with three other students. They were made to stand under the hot sun, a punishment prohibited by the Education Ministry.
The three other boys were let off their punishment early, but not this boy.
He remains unnamed as he is underaged.
In the mother’s first police report on the case, she said her son was made to stand under the sun from 10am to12.50 pm, about three hours.
On Wednesday, the family alleged that the authorities are trying to evade the main issue, which is the punishment meted out by the teacher that left their son in his current condition.
Instead of focusing on how the boy was punished and taking action against the culprit, they said the police were trying to establish if the boy was disabled before the incident.
Meanwhile, Dinesh said that he and the family spokesman Dayalan Sreebanlan have submitted a memorandum to Bukit Aman for the failure of the investigating officer (IO) to conduct a thorough investigation.
Dinesh said a police report was made on April 30 but the teacher had yet to be penalised.
He said the IO did not manage to obtain the school’s CCTV footage or its functionality records.
"The witness in this case, a child, has been exposed to the suspect by the IO in the headmaster's room. There is no reason for the IO to expose the witness to the suspect.
"This led to another teacher threatening the witness by asking the student not to get involved.
"Due to the mistake of the IO in revealing the witness, the suspect now knows the witness for the case and they both are still in the same school," he said.
Dinesh also said the Inspector-General of Police must replace the IO to ensure that the investigation runs smoothly, transparently, and accurately.
On 25 May, Ampang Jaya police chief Mohd Azam Ismail said that the investigation had revealed that the suspect, a male teacher, 37, had punished the boy and three others for “10 minutes”.
He said police had completed the investigation into the mother’s allegation and that the investigation paper had been referred to the public prosecutor’s office for further action.
Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek’s special officer, Thiyagaraj Sankaranarayanan, in a Facebook post, said that the teacher breached the ministry’s Professional Circular No.7/1995 Procedures on Punishment and Disciplinary Action on Students.
The circular warned teachers against flying into a rage, jumping to conclusions, torture and insults. – June 8, 2024.
