Parent sues Bunyore Girls for expelling daughter

A parent at Bunyore Girls High School in Vihiga County is seeking court orders to quash the decision to expel her daughter from the school following an arson attempt at the institution.

Ms Lavender Onguta also wants Vihiga High Court to issue a permanent order directing the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) to withdraw criminal charges instigated against her daughter at the lower court.

She is lamenting the criminal case, MCCR E1083 of 2021, has dragged on at the magistrate's court with the institution not following up thus keeping her daughter out of school.

In her pleadings in court, she says the decision to expel and charge her daughter has caused the family mental anguish and could send her daughter, who would be joining form four this year, into depression.

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Bunyore Girls expelled the girl in 2021 and the petitioner says the school has declined to sign her transfer form making it difficult to gain admission in other schools.

She says this has kept her daughter at home and denied her the right to education, the reason she is seeking readmission and compensation for her daughter to cater for damages, unlawful arrest, incarceration and delay of justice for the child.

Through Auma and Company Advocates, she has listed eight prayers she wants granted to her daughter after the criminal case of arson she is facing at the lower court took "too long" to be concluded.

The school hounded the student to court following an attempted arson of a dormitory in November 2021.

 But the parent said the matter has taken too long and that the school is not following up on the matter leaving her daughter and herself frustrated.

She has now sued the school and the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), who are now respondents, in an effort to terminate the case before the lower court and demand compensation as well as justice for her daughter.

She wants the High Court to declare the decision to expel her daughter was in breach of her constitutional right to fair administration and the right to basic education.

She also wants the High Court to order for adequate compensation for the "unlawful arrest and incarceration" of her daughter and "deprivation" of her constitutional right to freedom of movement.

The petitioner wants the High Court to declare the expulsion and criminal case against her daughter that has stagnated in the magistrate's court to be unconstitutional, null and void.

She explains through court papers that the expulsion and criminal case are in violation of Article 47 of the Constitution "as no proper investigations were conducted".

“A permanent order directing the DPP to withdraw the charges instigated upon the student be issued," she says adding that the High Court should declare her daughter's rights to education and fair administrative action were infringed by the school.

She wants the school to be ordered to establish a dispute resolution mechanism as a way of implementing Article 47 of the Constitution and the Education Act.

She believes if this is done, her daughter will not be discriminated against or victimised in any other manner upon readmission to the school.

In the court papers, the petitioner says fire broke out in the cube where her daughter and other students were residents.

She further says no proper investigations were conducted and that it is workers at the school who conducted a search and claimed they found a match box in the box belonging to her daughter.

“The matter was not referred to the Board of Management for further investigations as required by the Basic Education Act so as to give the students an opportunity to be heard,” she says in her court papers.

She says it is then that four students were arrested and detained at Vihiga police station and later charged in court without the knowledge of their patents.

"My daughter is home frustrated and undergoing mental anguish and she is almost succumbing to depression," Ms Onguta says.