Girl students made to clean school toilets in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna?

An education department officer on Thursday denied media reports that girl students were asked to clean toilets at a government school in Madhya Pradesh's Guna district, while state panchayat minister Mahendra Singh Sisodia ordered a probe into the incident.

Photographs purportedly showing a group of girl students cleaning toilets at a government school in Guna district appeared in the local media on Thursday. The media reports suggested the girls were students of Classes 5 and 6, and studying at a primary and middle school located in Chakdevpur village in the district.

In the evening, the district education officer (DEO) denied reports that the girls were forced to clean toilets in the school.

The girls, during a probe, clarified they had not cleaned the toilets and had just poured water by fetching it from a hand pump in the premises on Tuesday after using the lavatories as they had become dirty due to rains, DEO Sonam Jain said.

Jain said she has recorded statements of the girls as well as their parents and also staff members of the school and all of them denied that the students were asked to clean the toilets.

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An official said after the photographs purportedly showing girl students holding brooms in their hands and cleaning toilets by fetching water from a hand pump appeared in the local media in the morning, state minister Sisodia directed the Guna district collector to probe the matter.

A team of the school education department also reached the school on Thursday to conduct a separate probe, the official said.

Both primary and middle sections of the school are being run from the same campus in the village.

"We have taken the matter very seriously and are probing the issue. Action will be taken against those found guilty in the matter,” the education department's deputy director, Chandra Shekhar Sisodia, said.