The High Court has directed police to immediately arrest four people including a schoolteacher of Gazipur, and to produce them before it on Sunday, for covering up an incident of rape of a ninth-grader.

In a suomoto rule it also ordered the officer-in-charge of Kaliakoir Police Station to take appropriate legal action against the accused schoolteacher, and the three others, who are responsible for  covering up the incident through an arbitration.

Sujan Mahmud, a teacher of Daffodil Ideal High School at Vannara in Gazipur's Kaliakoir upazila, raped the student some days ago, according to a report published in the Bangla daily Prothom Alo on February 17.

Local arbitrators including Anwar Uddin, Abul Hashem and Mosharraf settled the matter through an arbitration on February 15. In the negotiation, Sujan was exempted after he was beaten with shoes, and fined Tk 1.5 lakh, the report said. It added that the victim and her family members had also been beaten and forced to leave the village.

The HC on Tuesday asked the government to inform it by March 15 what measures had been taken against the OC for not taking any legal action in connection with the incidents.