Gurgaon murder: School authorities booked, police hit parents with lathis
GURGAON: The Ryan International School management was charged on Sunday with cruelty to a child after the murder of an eight-yearold student, but the move didn’t pacify angry parents demanding a CBI investigation.
Hundreds of parents tried to enter the private school in Bhondsi, near Gurgaon, prompting police to lathi-charge to disperse the crowd.
About a dozen people were detained for arson and rioting and many more wounded in the police action. Cameras of some photojournalists were also damaged in the clashes.
The parents want the school shut until a CBI inquiry is ordered and stricter legal provisions are slapped against the management for the murder of a Class 2 boy on Friday.
Ashok Kumar, a 42-year-old bus conductor, was arrested after publicly confessing to slitting the throat of the student who he tried to sexually abuse inside the toilet at Ryan International.
He worked for a security agency contracted by the school.
The demonstrators torched a liquor shop about 50 metres from the school and threw bottles into the school campus, police said.
The people alleged bus drivers and conductors bought alcohol from the shop and got drunk.
Police also lathi-charged villagers at Ghamroj when they tried to block a highway demanding security to the suspected murderer’s family, saying he was framed.
Haryana education minister Ram Bilas Sharma ruled out closing the school as “the future of 1,200 students is at stake”, but promised zero leniency against the management for inadequate security on the campus.
“There is no boundary wall of the school. No separate toilets for drivers and conductors of 40 buses of the school, and windows in the toilet meant for students were found broken,” he said.
Besides, the school didn’t check the background of the bus conductor. The suspect was sacked by a private school in Ghamroj, his native village near Gurgaon, eight months ago for his “sexually predatory behaviour”, police investigations revealed on Saturday.
The education minister said the school is charged under Section 75 of the juvenile justice act, a provision in the law that deals with cruelty against children.