The local administration on Friday started the process of demolishing the classrooms of Bahanaga Bazar High School. The move came after parents expressed reluctance to send their children to the school where bodies of passengers killed in the horrific triple train pile-up at Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore district on June 2 evening were kept.
After the tragedy, the rescue team and local people retrieved passengers’ bodies from the mangled coaches and kept them at the classrooms and open hall of the school.
The next morning, the area was reverberated with cries of relatives who were killed in the mishap. Nearly after two days of the tragedy, the administration started shifting the bodies to different hospitals.
After completion of the ongoing summer vacation, the students were supposed to return to the school. But since their school was transformed into a temporary morgue, the students as well as their parents were scared. The parents were not willing to allow their children to go to school after the vacation.
After learning about the reluctance of the guardians, district Collector Dattatreya Bhausaheb Shinde yesterday visited the school and took stock of the situation.
Today morning, the administration began pulling down the classrooms of the school in the presence of the School Managing Committee.
“The School Managing Committee had suggested that if the school building was demolished the fear in the children’s mind would be dissipated,” said Pramila Swain, headmistress of Bahanaga Bazar High School.
Bahanaga School to be transformed into model school under 5T initiative
Meanwhile, the state government has decided to develop Bahanaga High School into a model school under the 5T initiative. The Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) today informed that the primary and elementary school buildings on the premises would completely be demolished. The decision to pull down the buildings has been taken following the directions of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.