The death of a 16-year-old class 10 student of the Delhi Public School, Faridabad by suicide on February 24 on account of bullying is a tragic reminder of the pervasive problem affecting many school-age children. The deceased had jumped from the 15th floor of his home, leaving behind a note in which he blamed the school for his death.

Besides arresting the senior academic coordinator, it is laudable that the local police have swiftly formed a special investigation team to probe into the child’s death.

According to media reports, a day before the incident, the teenager who was dyslexic and faced difficulty in solving numerical problems in the science exam had sought help from his teacher. Apart from rebuking and accusing the student of taking advantage of his condition, the teacher reportedly indicated that he would not be promoted to the next class. Quite stressed and worried the boy is believed to have taken the drastic step of ending his life.

Further, after he was allegedly sexually abused by some boys at his school before the March 2020 lockdown, the thought of attending school was nightmarish for him. However, despite repeated complaints made by his mother, the school authorities failed to elicit any action. Although the hapless teenager, unable to overcome the trauma went into clinical depression, nonetheless, the long school closure, was a blessing in disguise for him. His cousin found him happy in his small room; he also responded quite well to therapy sessions and was seemingly coming out of depression. He not only managed to find solace in his pet kitten but penned his thoughts in a diary which is expected to facilitate investigators in the case. 

Two days after his death, the school principal, in a newspaper statement said that he was a very talented child. “He was suffering from mental health issues and we supported him. We even investigated the complaint of the alleged sexual assault. But most of those (accused) students had left the school by the time the complaint was filed. We couldn't gather enough evidence to take action”.

While the law will take its course, it needs to be appreciated that timely action, both, at the school and household level would have enabled the boy to be alive today. At the tip of iceberg, it also echoes those of many young people struggling with mental health issues of whom several choose to end their lives through suicide for reasons best known to them.

It is disconcerting that more students ended their lives in 2020 than 2019, according to data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau student suicides spiked to a new high of 12,526 in 2020 contributing 8.2% deaths. Maharashtra recorded 1,648 student suicides followed by Odisha with 1,468 deaths (a jump of 287% over 2019, when there were 379 deaths). In Telangana, 489 students ended their lives as against 426 in 2019.

Now back to Bullying. It is a menace to the society and on a global average, one in five children have been bullied. Bullying causes a great deal of misery to others, and its effects on victims last for decades, perhaps even a lifetime.

Researchers who scrutinised the phenomenon of bullying in Scandinavia, England, Japan, the Netherlands, Canada and the US have found that bullies are a special breed of children and the vast majority of them (60 to 70 percent) are seldom involved in bullying, either as perpetrators or victims.

Bullying, as studies indicate, involves a pattern of repeated aggressive behaviour with negative intent directed from one child to another where there is a power difference. Most bullies are boys, while victims are equally girls and boys. Even as early in development, most children acquire internal restraints against such behaviour, those who bully do it consistently as their aggression starts at an early age. Suffice to say that the aggression can be physical or verbal.

Bullies generally lack prosocial behaviour, that is they do not know how to relate to others but have a strong need to dominate and derive satisfaction from injuring others. Bullies can pick on anyone initially and later single out specific children to prey on. Notably the victims have also been found to bear a particular set of psychological characteristics – yes, they are more sensitive, cautious, anxious and quiet than other children.

Many bullied children suffer in silence, and are reluctant to tell their parents or teachers about their experiences, for fear of reprisals or because of shame. On the other side, bullying which may begin in childhood can continue into adulthood. Being the most stable of human behaviour styles, bullies can turn into antisocial adults and may commit crimes, batter their wives, abuse their children, besides produce another generation of bullies.

While schools, whose primary mission is to support students in educational achievement, need to wake up to the realities of bullying and put in place effective measure to prevent its occurrence in the first place. Children must feel safe, supported and ready to learn because children exposed to violence and trauma may not feel safe or ready to learn. As against CBSE guidelines which necessitates that every school affiliated to has at least one full-time counsellor, if news reports are to be believed, according to a 2014 Assocham survey, only 3% of private schools in Delhi-NCR had counsellors. So, there is an imperative need to have counsellors in every school.

As the nature of bullying has changed, with perpetrators using mobile phones and social networks to humiliate their victims outside school hours as well as during school, is there a way out to handle bullies?  

With bullying believed to affect 700,00 French school children every year, the country recently adopted a new law that will make school bullying a criminal offence, which either students or staff can be prosecuted for. Those found guilty under the new legislation face a fine of Rs 37 lakhs if the victim of bullying is unable to attend schools for up to eight days. But more serious incidents would be punished with up to 10 years imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1.2 crore for longer periods of school absence or if the victim commits suicide or attempts to.