MP: FIR against four members of NGO for extorting money from school teachers on the name of survey

Alirajpur (Madhya Pradesh): Alirajpur district collector Raghvendra Singh on Tuesday ordered to register an FIR against four members of the Quality Council of India (QCI), a Delhi-based NGO for allegedly demanding bribes from the school teachers.

Sources claimed that two responses from the NGO came to Alirajpur as soon as they got the information and tried to settle the matter in a conciliatory agreement, but when the matter reached the collector, he gave instructions for strict action.

Notably, Free Press raised the issue on September 16 about how the QCI team engaged by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to assess the impact on the mental health and emotional well-being of students due to the closure of schools, COVID-19 and the shift towards online education threatening the school teachers for money.

The team was supposed to submit its report on a survey conducted in 50 government and private schools in the district between September 8 and 15. But the four members of the team reached the school and started demanding bribes by threatening the teachers.

Some of the school teachers claimed that team members threatened them with losing their job or government action against them.

The matter came to light after some of the school teachers discussed the incident among themselves and came to know about the reality.

As the matter came to the fore, Saurabh Arora, deputy director of NCPCR, New Delhi and QCI’s Saumil Tyagi met district education officer Arjun Singh Solanki and district project DPC Dr MK Dwivedi at the district headquarters.

According to the information from the sources, the officials of the NGO kept requesting to close the matter by apologizing by returning the amount taken by the four members of the survey team, but both the officials informed Collector Raghavendra Singh about the status of the incident.

Expressing displeasure, collector Raghavendra Singh directed to register an FIR against the culprits.

When contacted DEO Arjun Singh Solanki confirmed that the two officers came to meet them. He said that they have first refunded the amount taken from the teachers which is about Rs 18,450. However, we already informed the district collector about the incident and got instructions to register an FIR against the culprits.

Solanki added that in the beginning, we got information about taking Rs 11 thousand from two teachers, but when two officers of the NGO came, after taking information from the members of the survey team, the amount of illegal recovery came to about Rs 18,450. We already returned the said amount to the teachers by visiting their respective places.