“So he is gone now...he was so full of life,” gasped the little boy's father, held by his relatives, even as the child’s uncle lit the funeral pyre at “Swarag Ashram”, a cremation ground, in Sohna here on Saturday afternoon, amid huge presence of police and mourners.
The seven-year-old boy was murdered inside the washroom of his school in Bhondsi on Friday morning allegedly by the school bus conductor after a failed attempt to sodomise him. The accused, Ashok, was identified and arrested a few hours after the incident.
‘Beyond reason’
The boy's family, which originally belongs to Madhubani in Bihar, had kept the body in the mortuary overnight waiting for the relatives and friends to arrive. The last rites were conducted on Saturday around 1 p.m.
Crying inconsolably even as his friends and relatives tried to comfort him, the father, a quality manager with a garments company, mumbled: “He has gone without a reason. Had he fallen ill and died, we would have understood. Had he died in an accident, we would blame ourselves for negligence. Why did he kill him? What was his fault? He was innocent.”
Holding the child’s father against his chest, one of the relatives broke down: “I know no words are enough to console you. This pain is going to stay with you all your life. But be brave. Just think of his mother. There is only you to console her.”
One of his colleagues said: “See, hundreds of people have come out to support you. You now need to stand and fight for justice for your son.”
Besides the friends and relatives of the family, a large number of mourners from neighbouring villages and colonies also turned up at the cremation site to pay their last respects. Man and women could be seen climbing on the boundary wall of the cremation ground surrounding the pyre and standing along the road outside to catch a glimpse of the ceremony. The police were deployed in large numbers to maintain law and order.
The mourners demanded Haryana PWD (B&R) Minister Rao Narbir Singh, who had also come for the last rites, to order a CBI probe into the murder and initiate action against the school authorities.
‘Not the first time’
“It is not the first time such an incident has happened in this school. The Haryana government must initiate exemplary action against the school management,” demanded a man from the crowd. While a few could be overheard expressing shock at the brutality of the murder, others held the school management responsible for the tragedy and alleged lax security.
Gurugram MLA Umesh Agarwal, who was also present at the ceremony, said that steps would be taken to ensure that the schools in the city took all necessary measures for the safety and security of the students and to ensure that no such incident was repeated. He said that he would request Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar for a CBI probe into the incident.