Non-bailable arrest warrants issued against school director

JALANDHAR : Having failed to appear in the court of the district and sessions judge despite repeated summons, additional sessions judge (ASJ) Sham Lal has issued non-bailable arrest warrants against Anup Bowry, director of the Innocent Hearts School in the 2014 Aarush death case. Four-year-old Aarush was crushed under his own school bus on August 1, 2014.

The ASJ, sending the warrants to the office of the commissioner of police, has asked him to depute a senior officer, not below the rank of the assistant commissioner of police (ACP), to execute the warrants and produce him in the court on April 4. As per information, the court had sent several summons to Bowry, but he or his representative neither received the summons nor he appeared in the court to prove that he had hired a private contractor for transporting students.

“It seems Anup Bowry is evading his service and concealing his whereabouts and he cannot be served through ordinary process. Let he be summoned through a non-bailable warrant of arrest for April 4, 2018,” reads the order.

On the orders of the Punjab State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, the Jalandhar police had registered the case against the bus contractor for negligence that caused the child's death. In its order, the commission had observed that on August 1, 2014, the bus (PB08-AE-9153) did not have a regular driver and the contractor, Jagdeep Singh of Bashirpura, was deputed to ferry students. It further observed that the contractor even did not inform the management about the incident. The commission noted that the police acted only against the driver/conductor, but the contractor was also responsible for the same because the school management had a contract with the private contractor for transporting kids.

POLICE HAD LODGED A CASE AGAINST BUS CONTRACTOR FOR NEGLIGENCE THAT CAUSED CHILD'S DEATH