An Italian elementary school teacher has been charged with cutting the tongue of one of her pupils with a pair of scissors.
Judges said the 22-year-old supply teacher, who was sacked after the incident, would go on trial "very shortly".
Prosecutor Marco Ghezzi said the woman, identified only by her initials, R.S., was facing a charge of causing "deliberate bodily harm" after a test established that the deep cut in the pupil's tongue could only have been caused by squeezing the scissors tight.
R.S. would have faced a lesser charge if the test had indicated she had cut the boy accidentally, as she claimed.
"We still have doubts about the kind of scissors used since the ones the teacher gave us can't cut anything," Ghezzi added.
The February 20 incident in a second-grade classroom in Milan gained front-page headlines and shocked the nation.
Television news reports showed the stitched-up tongue of seven-year-old 'Ahmed', the son of Tunisian immigrants.
The substitute teacher, who was on her first assignment, admitted cutting the child's tongue but said it was an accident.
The teacher said she had "jokingly" threatened to cut the "unruly" child's tongue and was mimicking the action with a pair of scissors when the pupil made an unexpected move and cut his tongue on the scissors.
The child was rushed to hospital where he received five stitches to close the wound.
The boy's parents are suing her and the school for moral and material damages.
A lawyer for the family said the child told him that after the incident the teacher tried to convince the boy not to tell his mother exactly what happened.
