A hot-headed Salt Lake housekeeper threw boiling water on some allegedly noisy primary school kids playing in the school adjacent to her employer’s house on Wednesday, leaving them scalded and shaken.

“Besh korechhi (Good that I did it),” Archana Sangki, 35, allegedly said when vice-principal Sharmila Das of Salt Lake School rushed out of her chamber and demanded an explanation for her callous act.

Most of the children in the group of 10 suffered minor hand, head and chest burns. None of them, however, required hospitalisation.

Archana claimed that the kids, students of Class II and III, were a boisterous bunch who threw stones at the adjacent houses and needed to be disciplined. “They litter our compound with stones. Here is one,” she told the school authorities, picking up a pebble lying in front of the servant’s quarters next to the two-storeyed building at CA 219.

The housekeeper soon realised she was in a spot and fled along with her husband when parents and guardians of the injured students descended on Salt Lake School.

Archana was officially declared absconding later in the day. Her husband Mahadeb is the guard of CA 219, owned by the Bakshi family.

Oishi Ray, one of the students in the group that was attacked during the tiffin break around 9am, denied doing anything to annoy the neighbours. “The 10 of us were in a huddle. A few of our seniors were playing with pebbles and a couple of these may have accidentally landed in the house next door. Suddenly a woman came out of a small room near the garden and tossed a pan of hot water towards us....It hurt,” she said.

Another injured student, Esha Basu, said Archana dared her and the other children to complain to the principal about the hot-water attack. “She was standing across the wall and mocking us. She said: ‘Ja korbi kor. Tora report korbi (Do whatever you want. Will you report the incident?)’.”

School secretary Sumit Sengupta said two policemen arrived after a phone call to Bidhannagar (North) police station. “When the policemen and our vice-principal went to CA 219, the owner defended her housekeeper. She also said that a school shouldn’t have been allowed to be set up in a residential area.”

Salt Lake School was set up in 1978.

One of the family members, S. Bakshi, told Metro in the evening that the housekeeper’s patience ran out when a pebble struck her. “It wasn’t a one-off incident. The students often throw stones at our house,” she said.

The police have registered a case against Archana under Section 324 of the IPC, which pertains to causing hurt with dangerous weapons or means. It is a bailable offence.

The police said they didn’t detain Archana immediately because the school lodged an official complaint several hours after the incident. “We received the written complaint from the school around noon,” an officer of Bidhannagar (North) police station said.

The vice-principal explained the delay by saying that the school’s first priority was to treat the injured students.