Does
crime pay? I ask that today, when I saw that the above girl was given Rs200,000
by a wife of a Sri Lankan physician living in foreign lands, having heard her
story, and the girl had a little mischievous smirk on her face in the photo I
saw. An account was opened in her name and she gets the Rs2000 interest to spend any way she wants. New facts are coming to light on her personality and the possibly bending of the truth in her story, by her or someone who was able to intercede.
It
now appears she was playing truant from school, with only 3 days of attendance
in January and her parents are generally no shows at Parent Teacher events, and
are likely not to have received the request to contribute Rs800 for the
colorwashing of the class room. I have blogged the incident in two previous
blogs one to report the action of the schools and the other to comment on the
legal aspects of why she was charged and whether she should have been.
This
became big news as the President had heard the story and discussed it at the
last cabinet meeting. Anyway the girl has been absolved of the crime with the
incident erased from the books.
It
has also come to light that the girl due to the financial difficulties had
actually been presented with School Equipment presumably books and pens etc. to
the tune of Rs13,000 by the intervention of the Principal himself. So it is all
the more galling when it was Principal that the initial finger was pointed at
for breaking the rules, which after a subsequent investigation was found not to
be at fault.
This
is an example of how we can completely miss the truth, when further revelations
as to the incident are made. We may yet find more revelations in days to come
as it is now a media story and the journalists are probably investigating
further to elaborate on the story, to make the girl sound even more precocious
and irresistible as a subject matter for discussion and speculation.
The
moral then of the story is that there is always something we may not see at
first glance, and there may be other information that comes to light that may shed
a different light on this incident, turning it from being sorry for the child,
to complete chagrin that the real victim has now become the hapless owner of
the property whose trees this girls seems to habitually enjoy climbing to steal
coconuts. Many a question has been asked at to why she was stealing coconuts. Was
it to buy a mobile phone, a must have item today of a person that age or some other
item that school children carry which her parents were not able to supply. We have
not heard the last of her, and now she has a monthly income from the account to
spend on of Rs2,000. I say good luck to her and hope she is able to veer straight!
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