Talks to Reopen Arunachal's Don Bosco School That Caught Fire

Itanagar, Feb 23 : District administration has been holding talks with the parents who buried the bodies of their children in the Don Bosco school premises at Palin to remove the bodies so that the school could reopen, official sources said.

The authorities of Don Bosco school agreed to reopen the school if the bodies were removed from the school premises but the parents raised demands which included the erection of a memorial for the dead children, the sources said.

Fourteen of the 60 students of the school who were staying in a privately-run hostel were killed in the late night fire on February 10 after which the parents took the charred bodies to the school premises, located 50 meters away, and buried them there, officials said.

The school were closed as tension ran high and stones were hurled at the school building. A dozen teachers and school staff including the principal were later shifted by helicopters to Itanagar.

Prohibitory orders under section 144 of CrPC has been imposed in and around the middle school since the incident, sources said.

A magisterial enquiry is continuing to find the cause of fire, the sources said.