Probe against eloped Principal and Teacher at Mahanama College

Probe against eloped Principal and Teacher at Mahanama College

An incident is reported of an instance where the husband had made a complaint with the police about his wife, a 30 year old married teacher having forcibly abducted his child from his possession and it is understood that this teacher is allegedly having an intimate connection

with the Principal of Mahanama College, Colombo, Prasanna Upashantha.

Though a problematic situation relating to one's personal behaviour may not be of any significance to another, when an illicit association between a married Principal who controls the administration and discipline of a school and his alliance with another married lady-teacher of the same school being broadcast it has by now resulted in the disciplinary procedures of that school collapsing.

The lady teacher connected to the incident was an attractive person who was at one time attached to morning programmes as an announcer of the national rupavahini. During this period when she was working for rupavahini she happened to get married to an employee at the same place and subsequently had a child. It was during one of her visits on duty that she happened to meet the Principal for the first time and later for some reason she had abandoned her job with rupavahini and then got employed in the teaching profession at Mahanama College, it is reported. College sources reveal that this Principal aged 56 years and is closing upon his retirement had for a period of time been having this affair with the said teacher and the two of them had been moving about frequently in the jeep belonging to the Principal. Later the affair had gone too far and both of them had felt the need to live together.

Though no response has been reported from the side of the Principal's wife with regard to this incident, the teacher's husband of course had been constantly arguing with her, it was reported. Later, the teacher had come to a conclusion of living together with the Principal and as it is not possible to leave her one and a half year old child with the husband she had planned to take the child and go with the Principal. Last Sunday the teacher had arrived to her house in the jeep belonging to the Principal and had abducted the child by force and who was in the possession of the servant.

The teacher's husband not being able to control the situation had then lodged a complaint with Talangama Police regarding the incident. After the complaint was made, the Principal who had contacted the teacher's husband is supposed to have threatened him which made the latter to lodge another entry with the police relevant to that incident too.

This issue had spread around students of the college leading to an interesting dialogue and furthermore the equally interesting and surprising fact had been that even after the said incident the Principal as well as the teacher had both been found moving about in each other's company exactly as on previous occasions in the past week.

It is the opinion of the staff of teachers of the school concerned that a married Principal had got involved in an unconventional romance with a lady teacher of the same school thus provides a wrong precedence in the presence of the students. Sometime back too another Principal of this same school had his image tarnished for having asked sexual bribes from mothers to admit their children to this school and he was expelled from the school. The Lanka Guru Seva Sangamaya had complained to the Secretary of the Education Department requesting that this issue be solved in relation to discipline in schools. What was reported this morning was that the Ministry of Education has launched an investigation in relation to the incident.