Arrest raises questions over police probe
Undue haste in closing probe and media spotlight may have made cops commit mistakes and overlook key clues, say experts
GURGAON: Undue haste in closing the probe into the murder of an eight-year-old student in Gurgaon’s Ryan International School and the media spotlight may have made the police commit several mistakes and overlook key clues, the victim’s family and legal experts alleged on Wednesday.
The charges came hours after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) detained a Class 11 student of the same school and said the older boy allegedly committed the murder to get examinations and a parent-teacher meeting postponed.
Pradyumn, a student of Class 2, was found dead in the school toilet with his throat slit by a sharp-edged weapon on the morning of September 8. The same day, Gurgaon police arrested bus conductor Ashok Kumar but failed to satisfy the victim’s family or establish a motive, leading to the probe being given to the CBI.
Barun Chandra Thakur, the father of the victim Pradyumn Thakur, asked how the police special investigation team (SIT) failed to identify and probe a student, who was not only visible in surveillance footage but was also the first to report the crime.
“We were never satisfied with the theory of the Gurgaon police,” he said. “Why did the Haryana police ignore the CCTV footage? This was either deliberate or it was done to divert attention from the school management,” he alleged.
Thakur’s lawyer Sushil Tekriwal said the arrest of a 42-year-old school bus conductor hours after the crime indicated bungling of the probe. “We have been insisting from Day 1 that the police botched up the case.”
The police, however, denied all allegations of a lapse in the probe and said any missing link in the case was probably because the investigation was abruptly transferred to the CBI. “The case was transferred otherwise our investigation could have gone in that direction as well,” said Haryana DGP BS Sandhu.
Deputy commissioner of police (South Gurgaon) Ashok Bakshi, who headed SIT, said they had received no official communication from the CBI. “The probe was held by us and handed over to the agency and they are now working on it,” he said.
The agency claimed its investigators were still probing charges of destruction of evidence against the school management. But activists based in Gurgaon said the scale of the alleged botch-up raised questions.
“Mistakes do happen but such a major faux pas by the police needs some answering. If Ashok Kumar has been deliberately framed, then it is a heinous crime,” said SK Sharma, an activist whose son also studies at Ryan International School.
Some officials admitted that the police could have made a mistake due to public pressure.
Family members of Ashok Kumar questioned why the police had made the conductor confess in front of a camera. “They beat him so badly that there was no way out for him but accepting the crime,” alleged Ami Chand, Kumar’s father.
TRY CLASS 11 BOY AS ADULT: VICTIM’S KIN
Pradyumn’s father’s lawyer, Sushil Tekriwal, said he would ask juvenile justice board to treat the boy as an adult.
Senior advocate Sanjay Hedge said the accused could be treated as an adult “only if the JJB certifies that this is a crime which fell within the ambit of the amended JJB act”. Set up in all districts of the country, the juvenile justice board deals with children in conflict with law.
EERIE SILENCE AT HOUSE OF SUSPECT
Eerie silence prevailed at the house of the Class 11 student, who has been accused by the CBI of murdering Class 2 student Pradyumn Thakur at Ryan International School, Bhondsi, on September 8. As the news surfaced on Wednesday, the accused’s family was not found at their home in Sohna, 22-km from Gurgaon.
However, the suspect’s father, a lawyer, said in a Gurgaon court on Wednesday that his son was innocent. “My son is innocent. He has been framed,” he said.
He said that they have fully cooperated with the CBI in the investigation and his son would also come out be innocent.