Police have registered a case against a preschool teacher and the school manager after a three-year-old child was allegedly locked inside a bathroom at a school on BT Kawade Road in Pune’s Ghorpadi area.
The case was registered at Mundhwa police station against teacher Manita Bedi and school manager Sonali Deshmukh under Section 127(2) and Section 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, along with Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
According to police information cited in the complaint, the child, aged three years and four months, was attending nursery at the preschool. The parents dropped him at the school as usual on September 8, 2026. When the mother arrived at about 2.15 pm to take him home after school, she was allegedly told that the child had been confined in a room because he had been misbehaving.
The child reportedly told his mother while crying that teacher Manita had locked him inside the school bathroom. The complaint alleges that, when questioned, the teacher said the child had been creating a disturbance and that he was locked in the bathroom for some time because there was no other available space.
The parents then sought the school’s CCTV footage to establish what had happened. The complaint states that the school manager gave several reasons for not showing the footage. After repeated follow-up, the parents were shown the recording on September 21. They have claimed that the footage showed the teacher taking the child into the bathroom and locking him inside.
The parents sought a copy of the recording on a pen drive on September 22. According to the complaint, the school then said that the CCTV recording had been overwritten and was no longer available. The parents have alleged that this amounted to an attempt to destroy evidence. The allegation will be examined as part of the police investigation; the available report does not establish whether the recording was deliberately deleted or overwritten through routine system operation.
The complaint was filed on Sunday by a 36-year-old woman from the Solace Park and BT Kawade Road area. Following the complaint, Mundhwa police registered the case and began investigating the alleged confinement and the school’s handling of the CCTV footage.
Police Sub-Inspector Ranjit Mhaske is conducting the further investigation. The supplied report does not provide details of any arrest, action by the education authorities, or a response from the school management.
