Ahmedabad school fined ₹10,000 for having no CCTV footage of a pupil’s injury

A student at Sharda Vidya Mandir School in Bhuyangdev, Ahmedabad, was injured on school premises by a sharp object. It was a hand wound that needed stitches, with no clear account of how it happened. The school was asked for the CCTV footage covering that period. It delayed, and then said the recording was not available.

What the education officer did

The District Education Officer for Ahmedabad City West imposed a ₹10,000 penalty on the school, to be paid within two days through a government treasury challan, holding that the failure breached the Right to Education Act and the education department's own requirements on maintaining surveillance. The order does not stop at the fine: the management has been directed to submit proof that the school's CCTV cameras are functioning and that recordings are being properly maintained.

Why a missing recording is treated as its own offence

Because without it, nothing about the incident can be established either way. Cameras in schools exist so that a disputed event, such as a fall, a fight or an unexplained wound, has a record independent of whoever is telling the story. A school that keeps cameras it cannot retrieve footage from has the appearance of supervision without the substance, and this order prices that gap.

What parents can reasonably ask

• Where the cameras are, and whether corridors, stairwells, playgrounds and laboratories are covered.
• How long recordings are retained. This is the question that actually decides whether footage exists when you need it.
• Who can authorise a review of footage, and how quickly.
• How injuries are logged, and whether the incident register is shown to parents the same day.

The complaint route, when a school will not answer, is the District Education Officer for your area. This order is a useful precedent to cite: the department has treated unavailable footage as a compliance failure in itself, not merely as bad luck.

CareerBox News Desk, reporting on the penalty order of the District Education Officer, Ahmedabad City West, Education Department, Government of Gujarat. Official portal: education.gujarat.gov.in. Dates and eligibility change; confirm them on the official portal before you act.