Story Continues……….4 more students along with their teacher successfully ran away from school trip of NASA

Story continues………. Only few days after news of 2 Indian school students went missing was published in these columns, similar kind of reports are coming again which suggests that now 4 of the 15 school students (Doaba Public School, Punjab, India), who recently went to United States on  NASA educational tour, have not returned to their homeland and local police has started investigation into their disappearance.

The students of Doaba Public School in village Parowal were accompanied by their teacher Meenu Sharma during the tour starting on July 21. The teacher who accompanied them did not return either, but sent an e-mail saying that she had got married. The teacher, Minu Sharma, who accompanied the 19 students said she wanted leave for one month after being married. They were holding valid US visas for three months.

Hoshiarpur’s police chief Sukhchain Singh Gill informed media men that he has deputed a deputy superintendent to look into the complaint lodged by school principal Balwinder Kaur. Complaint lodged by the Principal Balwinder Kaur on behalf of school administration has held the parents responsible for whole incident.

The four students have been identified as Sumit Sahni of village Lalian, Baljinder Singh of Ibrahimpur, Arshdeep of Badesron and Dalbir Singh of Chacknoa village.  All these villages are situated near Garhshankar town in Hoshiarpur District of Punjab State.

Sumit’s mother Rashwinder Kaur told the media over phone on Sunday that she was not aware about the disappearance of her son along with three other students. She said her son did not contact the family after reaching the United States. A theory which is unlikely to be adopted by the Police and School authorities.

The incident comes close on the heels of two students of Dayanand Model School in Jalandhar – Paramjit Singh and Kunal Bhandari – also disappearing in the United States. See our post dated  August 8, 2008 here.

Local police, US homeland security officials and the Indian embassy have been informed about the four missing students and their teacher.

School authorities claimed that missing students and their parents they had planned to go missing. Hoshiarpur and Jalandhar districts of Punjab are known for their expatriate community and willingness of people to settle abroad through legal or illegal means.

Punjab’s prominent Propaganda Political Party (Lok Bhalai Party) has not reacted to the reports yet. Lok Bhalai Party is known for threatening Travel Agents, Study Abroad Agencies and NRIs (Non Resident Indians) to collect money with the help of their own ‘illegal army’ of party supporters mainly unemployed Punjabi youths who visit every travel agent or Study abroad agencies posing as prospective clients or students who wish to study abroad and than fabricating the travel agent by threatning to file false case of Kabootarbazi (a term used in India to describe the different ways of agents to send people abroad on tourist or visitor’s visa for stay illegally in foreign land). It is about time for the party president Balwant Singh Ramoowalia to buy a ticket to USA to look for missing students and teachers, or it is not in their political agenda? Probably the party is looking for some big Travel Agency in either Punjab or Delhi so that they can fabricate them in this popular incident which has raised many eyebrows including NASA officials which are now thinking about suspending further educational trips from Indian schools to prevent such incidents.

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