A private school classroom in Visakhapatnam became the site of a child’s death on Thursday, when a six-year-old boy fell unconscious moments after his teacher struck him for failing to finish his homework, according to police.
Investigators identified the child as Pranay Teja, a student at a school located in the One Town area of the city, based on accounts from Indian media.
Authorities have opened multiple inquiries into the death. Police filed a formal case and launched an investigation, and revenue officials separately directed their own review of how the boy came to collapse.
Surveillance video recorded inside the room captured the moments leading up to the incident. The boy is seen clutching his slate while waiting in line, crying and clearly upset as he reaches the front. He appears to beg the teacher not to hit him, but she draws him toward her and strikes his cheek. He falls against her almost immediately afterward.
Staff members were called over and tried to revive the child with CPR before rushing him to a hospital, where physicians pronounced him dead on arrival.
Sadhu Dileep Chakravarthy, the Revenue Divisional Officer for Visakhapatnam, suggested the boy might have gone into cardiac arrest brought on by fear, though he stressed that an official inquiry would determine the facts. “The teacher apparently alerted the other teachers, who rushed there and tried to do CPR on the student. Later, the school staff rushed him to a nearby hospital, but doctors declared him dead on arrival,” he told reporters.
Medical staff, however, warned against reaching any conclusion ahead of an autopsy. The body was moved to King George Hospital for the examination. Its superintendent, Dr. I Vani, verified that Pranay had no signs of life on arrival. “I, too, saw the video, but we cannot immediately say whether he suffered cardiac arrest due to panic or any other reason,” she told Hindustan Times.
The boy’s relatives described him as well and energetic that morning. His father recounted that Pranay had played normally the night before and had shown no symptoms of any illness, adding that the child had been the one eager to attend class that day.
Pranay’s parents agreed to the post-mortem procedure, which doctors said would settle the question of what killed him.
