NEW DELHI: Illegal but often tolerated, caning is rife in India`s school system, but the recent suicide of a 12-year-old pupil after a beating has brought the practice out of the shadows.

Rouvanjit Rawla, a pupil at the prestigious La Martiniere for Boys school in the eastern city of Kolkata, hanged himself in his room earlier this year after being caned for bringing stink bombs into class.

After spending months chasing the school for answers, his father, textile businessman Ajay Rawla, finally filed a police complaint against three teachers last month and is determined to press for justice.

"We were a jolly, happy family," he told AFP. "Just go onto Rouvan`s Facebook page and every one of his friends has called him a fun and friendly young boy. He used to be the life of the party."

Mental health groups point out that suicides can rarely be attributed to a single reason, but Rawla is in no doubt that the caning by the school principal was the factor that pushed his son over the edge.

"These people are teachers. They are supposed to make your children better, stronger people not drive them to death," he told AFP by telephone from Kolkata, fighting back tears.

A Supreme Court judgment in 2000 prohibited corporal punishment in all its forms in India. The right of children to free and compulsory education act, passed in 2009, also bans corporal punishment.

But as is often the case in India, the gap between liberal and well-meaning laws passed by the distant federal government in New Delhi and enforcement in local areas is huge.

According to a UN Children`s Fund (UNICEF) report published in 2008, two out of three schoolchildren in India said they had been subjected to corporal punishment.

The practice is particularly prevalent in government-run schools, where the vast majority of cases (62 percent) were reported.

Lov Verma, secretary of a national child rights protection commission, the NCPCR, says caning, beatings and slappings are still prevalent in schools all across the country.

"We cannot shut our eyes to the reality, we get umpteen cases of corporal punishment (reported to us). Laws are there but that does not mean it is not happening," he said.

A government study conducted by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare Development in 2008 mirrored the UN findings: two out of three children across 13 states had been victims of corporal punishment.

The reasons are multiple: cultural attitudes to violence, which are changing slowly in cities but remain entrenched in rural areas; lack of training for teachers; and large class sizes that make pupils hard to control.

Within the teaching profession, attitudes vary. Most schoolteachers publicly disavow violence in the classroom.

"Most private schools in Delhi have greatly reduced corporal punishment, caning, being hit by the ruler etcetera," argued Jyoti Bose, principal of Springdales high school.

"It is all very old generation. We have to learn to negotiate and engage with the child."

Herod Mullick, general secretary of Bongiyo Christiyo Porisheba, an umbrella organisation of 700 Christian missionary schools in Kolkata, says some teachers resort to violence out of desperation.

"You do not allow caning and you do not have a proper procedure in place for counselling or other forms of disciplining, so both the children and teachers are lost in the matter," he said.

Rounjit Rawla`s case has brought about a huge public outcry, largely because the case occurred in one of India`s oldest and most elite schools and to a middle class family.

But as the UN and government of India research underlined, most cases of corporal punishment take place in public schools and go largely unrecorded and unheard off.

"India pampers its richer children and pedigree dogs, most of the kids in most schools are unprotected by society and state," wrote Supreme Court lawyer Rajeev Dhavan in a column in the Mail Today newspaper.

The national bout of introspection also prompted Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan to recall his childhood experience of beatings at the hands of teachers.

"There was not a single year when our principal did not practice his Cambridge Blue tennis forehand on our bent-over posteriors," Bachchan wrote on his blog.

"That was 1956 it is 2010 now," Bachchan said. "Times have changed and so have circumstances."

For Rouvanjit`s father in Kolkata, times did not change fast enough.

"As a father I need answers to my son`s death and I will fight till the end to get justice for Rouvan," he said.

BDST: 8:48 HRS, July 4, 2010