Justice comes at a cost

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Fighting for justice is in my blood. I have seen my father severely wounded by workers who did not realise he was only wanting to help them. He even lost his job because of this and when the owners offered him a measly compensation, though I was only 14 years old at that time, I told him not to accept it and he didn’t.

I know what it is like to take on a management; I’ve seen that struggle very closely. It takes a lot of resolve to pursue a fight knowing fully well that they will do everything in their vast capacity to silence a dissenting voice. Today, a fight against a big corporate involves threats, arm-twisting and any other method to break the other person emotionally and mentally.
So when the Vibgyor High School, where my daughter Adhishree was studying, sent a circular in 2008 increasing the school fees from `45,000 to `83,000 and asked for payment in five working days, I decided to fight it out. I spoke with the other parents in the hope that we would form one unified voice. The management was not ready to speak and said if we could not afford the fees we should go to another school. We went to the Chief Minister, the education minister but no one cared.
The school is owned by Rustom Kerawalla, chairman and trustee of the Rustom Kerawalla Foundation. It has been a long, strenuous and unequal fight in which I, thanks to my senior counsel Capt. B.K. Subbarao, have won seven cases against the school despite them having the who’s who in the legal world both in Mumbai and in the Supreme Court. In March 2008, we filed a petition and in April 2009, the Bombay High Court said that the school and parents should present their side to the deputy director, education, and he would decide the quantum of fees. The deputy director gave an order fixing the fee at between `54,000-57,000. Mr Kerawalla refused to accept that and still demanded higher fees. Most of the parents out of fear/ignorance paid the high fees but 300-400 parents and I refused to be cowed down and went to see him. He got an order from the city civil court prohibiting five of us, the petitioner parents, from coming within 500 metre of the school.
I then went to the police station to file a complaint under the Prohibition of Capitation Fees Act, 1987, as the overcharging is a criminal offence. In September 2009, I started getting calls from a woman warning me that I would be killed in a road accident or have acid thrown on me. After a few such calls, I recorded the message and gave it to the Bangur Nagar police station. But DCP Sanjay Banerjee did nothing. After I complained to the additional CP Suresh Khopde, he called the Bangur Nagar Police Station and told them to take necessary actions.
In all of this, there have been several times when I’ve felt let down or low, but each time I picked myself up saying that the fight is worth it. On a very basic level, it was a violation of my child’s right to education. Can money bring in so much greed that someone can completely overlook the fact that the one person who is getting caught in the crossfire is a school child?
In April 2010 my daughter passed her Class VIII with a very good report and was promoted to Class IX. In May the first semester fee of `33,000 was collected. Meanwhile, Mr Kerawalla had filed an appeal in the High Court saying he was aggrieved by the deputy director’s order.
On June 2, the day before the school was to open, I got a letter saying my daughter Adhishree was expelled from the school because I had filed a false complaint against the school and the trustees, threatened the principal and taken out a morcha against the school. Far from threatening, I had only told the principal that my daughter’s two notebooks had gone missing when they were sent for corrections and expressed a hope that she was not being victimised. Their fight was with me, yet they chose to indulge in such petty ways to harass her. Adhishree handled all of this with remarkable maturity, speaking volumes of how age has little to do with one’s poise.
I filed a petition in the Bombay High Court challenging her dismissal. The case came before Chief justice Mohit Shah and J. Dharmadhikari. Since there was five minutes for the court to close, the judges said they were ruling in my favour and would give the order the next day. To my utter shock, the next day they said that my daughter should be put in another school since she has been going through so much mental trauma.
Emboldened by this, Mr Kerawalla got the parents of other students in the school to sign on a cyclostyled circular saying that they don’t want Adhishree to come back to the school because of her mother. This little girl of 13 was deprived of her right to study in a school of her choice, she who had never earned a single complaint, and always won praise for her brilliance.
It has been a roller coaster of emotions for me over four years. I was constantly moving from anguish and anger, to happiness and encouragement. I was frustrated when the judgement went against me, dejected that after all that faith in the judiciary, it didn’t work in our favour. But I didn’t lose hope.
Meanwhile, during a petition in the high court filed by the Federation of Unaided Schools in some matter, I found that Kerawalla is the chairman of the Federation of Private Unaided Schools and that Justice Dharmadhikari’s father is a trustee of the Global International School, which is a part of the Federation. Since this had come to my notice I filed a review petition, which I argued myself and said that I want a judicial order and not a psychiatrist’s order talking of my daughter’s trauma continuing if she attended the school. I told the CJ that Justice Dharmadhikari should be recused from hearing the case. I brought to their notice that my daughter has to travel 70 km everyday to and back from her school. But the judges said there would be no change in the order.
My girl was traumatised by all this. I used to make her sleep near me to comfort her and one night I awoke to find her missing. I found her sitting crouched with her head in her hands near the window and she was crying. I hugged her and she said, “What wrong have I done for the school not wanting me?”
It was so difficult for me to deal with her dejection. I was heartbroken seeing how this matter had been playing on her mind. I had to hide my anger, put up a brave front and tell her that we would fight it. I told her that justice will prevail.
My husband too was distraught and wanted me to give up the fight. In November 2011, after Adhishree had settled in her school, I went to the Supreme Court to get the expulsion order withdrawn and succeeded in getting the order.
The case Mr Kerawalla filed in the Supreme Court against the deputy director’s order reducing the fee is expected to come for final hearing in the SC next month. The SC has asked us to file an affidavit saying that if the final order goes against us then we will pay the fees as per the final order. On the other hand, Mr Kerawalla has to give an affidavit saying that he will refund the extra fees taken if he loses the case.
If we win, all the parents stand to gain lakhs of rupees they shelled out over the years since 2008.