Kochi: Kochi city police on Friday arrested three persons in connection with the Peace School case. The publishers of the book for Class II students approved by the school were in the dock. Those arrested were identified as Dawood Mohamed Vaid, founder of Burooj Realisation, Sameed Ahammed Sheikh, 31 and Sahil Hameed Said, 28. The cops summoned them for interrogation after issuing a formal notice and later arrested them.
The accused were running Burooj Realisation, a Mumbai-based Islamic research centre. Cops registered a case against the Peace School authorities after finding that the textbooks given to children contained objectionable content. Dawood is the chairman of Burooj. Sahil is curriculum designer while Sameed was assigned the job of selecting pictures for the book. Peace School was relying on Burooj Realisation for textbooks.
Dawood Mohamed Vaid
According to police the accused had deposed that the controversial chapter would be removed from the textbook in the next academic year onwards. M.M. Akbar, chairman of the committee monitoring the schools had claimed that they are just following the textbooks published by the publishers and the same was withdrawn soon after it was found to be objectionable. Police registered a case against the Peace International School, Chakkaraparambu. They slapped 153A. (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language.)
Sameed Ahammed Sheikh
District Educational Officers, Aluva and Ernakulam gave a report to police after Ernakulam assistant commissioner Laljy K. filed a complaint before them. This is the second complaint filed by the police against the Peace Schools in the district. Police had recently inspected many of the branches of Peace Schools across the state. According to a source at the school, religious texts and study materials were collected from the schools after the incident of Merin, a teacher with the Peace School allegedly joining Islamic State.
