Sharjah: Worried parents were unsure of the whereabouts of their children when a man dressed in a military uniform stopped a bus carrying 30 school children on Monday and ordered them to walk home as punishment for "misbehaviour".
A junior officer in the armed forces stopped a bus of sixth to 12th grade boys on a busy junction, ordered the bus driver to return to the school and told the pupils to walk home for littering the streets with paper.
Al Ahliya Private School in Sharjah started receiving frantic phone calls from parents when their children failed to turn up at home at the expected time. Al Gharb police station confirmed that a complaint was filed by the school.
With some pupils reaching home two hours late, parents expressed shock and anger at the incident, saying they expected their children to be secure in school.
One mother said she went out looking for her 14-year-old son after waiting for an hour, and found him walking home by himself. "The school does not allow mobile phones so there was no way for the parents to reach their children," she said.
According to one of the pupils, the man was angry at the pupils for throwing paper out of the windows following their exam. "He scolded us and told us what we did was wrong, and said we should walk home."
Ebrahim Mohammad Hamad, the principal of the school, said the bus was stopped a few minutes from the school at the Gold Souq junction in Sharjah before any of the pupils could be dropped home.
When asked about the incident by Gulf News, the officer who stopped the bus said his actions were "within his rights".
"Those pupils misbehaved by throwing paper at my car so I asked them to walk home. I will solve this issue myself with the school," he said.
