Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi announced the sentence on Tuesday, adding, however, that the sentence has not yet been finalized.

On May 28, families of some 40 students filed a lawsuit against a supervisor at a private boy’s high school in District 2 of Tehran on charges of sexual harassment against their children. Following the lawsuit, security police arrested the supervisor on charges of giving cigarettes and alcoholic beverages to the students, showing them pornographic videos on his cell phone and carrying out acts of sexual harassment.

The scandal followed the intervention of Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei, who expressed deep regret over the heinous crime and called for carrying out ‘hodud’ penalties against the convict.

‘Hodud’ is punishment fixed in the Quran and hadith for crimes considered to be against the rights of God.

The court, meanwhile, has dismissed accusations of rape after submitting the minors to medical tests, but confirming the validity of reports on certain acts of sexual harassment. Tehran’s prosecutor general had previously said that the convict has accepted the charges.