52 teachers secretly filmed in school toilet, blackmailed into working without salary: Report

Around 52 teachers in a school of Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut were reportedly filmed in the washrooms and were blackmailed with the footage for months by the authority into working without salary.

According to a report by the Times of India, the Meerut police registered an FIR on Wednesday against the secretary of the management committee and his son, who was arrested later that evening, for alleged sexual harassment. The teachers, in their complaint, said that the secretary used to threaten them whenever they raised the issue of not getting their salary and blackmailed them with the CCTV footage, which had objectionable images.

Denying the charges against him and calling the allegations fake, the secretary said, ‘there is no CCTV camera installed inside the women’s toilet’ but it has been installed in the men’s washroom, TOI quoted. “This was done against the backdrop of recent cases of murders inside some schools,” he added, TOI quoted.

Although, he accepted that the teachers were not being paid their salaries for a few months, due to the situation prevailed after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The secretary and his son have been booked under IPC sections 354 (a) (sexual harassment), 354 (c) (voyeurism), and 504 (intentional insult).