Abu Dhabi: Five defendants involved in the case of the KG-1 student who died in her school bus earlier this month denied the charges against them during the case’s first session at the Abu Dhabi Court of Misdemeanour on Wednesday.
After being left to suffocate in her Al Worood Academy Private School bus, the four year-old Indian victim, Nizaha Aalaa died.
Reports say that she had attempted to get out from the bus and was found lying beside the vehicle’s exit.
The school’s principal, its bus driver, the bus supervisor, an employee at the school and the owner of the transport company that lent its vehicles to the school are all being tried in the case.
The bus attendant and the driver, named suspects one and two, respectively, denied charges of negligence and failure to perform their duties.
“My job is to take the students between their homes and the school. I am not allowed to speak to them or communicate with them in any way,” the Pakistani school bus driver said during the session.
The second defendant found the victim when he came to board the bus later in the day after it was left parked for several hours.
Court documents state that the bus attendant admitted during investigations at the Public Prosecution that she had not completed checking all the seats of the bus for any children that may have been left behind before disembarking the vehicle.
She did not make any statements during the hearing.
The third offender, the Lebanese school employee, L.A., told the court that her job is that of receptionist.
“I only take complaints from the students and I resolve their issues,” she said at court. She is also charged with negligence and failure to perform her duties.
The fourth and fifth defendants, the South African school principal and the Pakistani transport company owner, are facing charges of endangering the lives of students being transported in the school’s buses.
According to police reports, the bus is not authorised to be used for school transportation. The school principal denied all charges, adding that he did, in fact, adhere to regulations.
The fifth suspect stated that it was not his job to check whether the buses were licensed to be used for transportation and that he was only lending the vehicles to the school. He also faces charges of hiring 10 individuals who are not under his sponsorship and using them as school bus supervisors.
The company owner is now detained and the court rejected his request for bail.
Speaking to Gulf News before the hearing, the victim’s father, Naseer Ahmad, said: “Right now we are not asking for any money or compensation and we only want to ensure that such a tragedy does not recur. I think that the mistakes that the driver and the supervisor made are human errors and that the major mistake was from the school’s management. No amount of money can bring back my child.”
The Department of Transport (DoT) had issued a set of regulations for all school buses.
It gave Abu Dhabi schools one year to completely revamp their entire fleet of buses.
Among the new regulations, bus windows should not be locked and must have an opening space of not more than seven centimetres to allow ventilation. Following an Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) decision issued this week, the school’s administrative and financial procedures have been taken over by the Council and are no longer under the jurisdiction of the school’s administration. The Al Worood Academy Private School will close its doors on August 31, 2015 and all current students will be transferred to other schools.
The court has been adjourned until November 19 to take a closer look at the case files.
