In july 16 2004 Kumbakonam school fire accident happened in a school in
Kumbakonam town in Thanjavur district . A total of 94 students of the primary section of the Krishna English Medium School were burnt to death in their classroom as the thatched roof caught fire on 16 July 2004. The accident was the one of the four major fire accidents and largest school accident in Tamil Nadu, and second in terms of casualties for fire incidents in schools in India.
A committee setup under retired Judge Sampath found out that the major reason for the heavy casualty is the false tactics of the management to bring the other two school students to the aided primary school to mislead the inspecting authorities about the student-teacher ratio. The Chief Minister who visited the site ordered withdrawal of recognition of the three schools, prosecution on the school authorities and the correspondent, Suspension of the Chief Educational Officer, the District Elementary Educational Officer and the Assistant Elementary Educational Officer of Thanjur school district. A compensation of ₹ one lakh was provided to the kins of the victims, ₹
25,000 to the severely injured and ₹ 10,000 to other injured from the Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund. The district administration arranged a primary school in Natham village and accommodated 46 students under the Educational Guarantee Scheme of the government.
The state government constructed a memorial park near Palakarai, the Cauvery bridge, in Kumbakonam in memory of the lost lives, which was opened on 6 June 2010. The government allotted housing plots to 59 homeless parents of the deceased of the total 89.
The trial of the case started after a long delay on 24 September 2012 in the Thanjavur district sessions court. The case had 21 accused and had 488 witnesses that included 18 children affected in the accident. The headmaster, Prabharan and three others turned approvers. A total of 17 people were chargesheeted in the case, which included seventeen included Pulavar Palanichamy, his wife and correspondent of school Saraswati, three teachers, six officers in the education department (elementary), the Kumbakonam municipal commissioner, town planning officer and four assistants in the education department. On July 30, 2014, Thanjavur district sessions court sentenced school founder Pulavar Palanichamy to life imprisonment and fined Rs 51,65,700. Ten others including school staff and officials from the municipality and education department of the state, were sentenced to five year imprisonment. Eleven accused, including three teachers were released from the cas
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