Ryan International School murder case: CBI is framing my son, says Class XI boy's father

The Class XI student who has been detained for the murder of the 7-year-old Pradyuman of Ryan International School was the first to report the murder to the school's gardener. In the last two months, sources have revealed that the boy was interrogated over a dozen times. The CBI has also conducted crime scene reconstruction exercises with him and the arrest was made after the CCTV footage established that the boy chaperoned Pradyuman to the toilet.

The father of the teenaged boy accused the CBI of framing his son. The father revealed that after interrogating his son for 12 hours at the CBI headquarters, the boy was declared as the prime accused in the case. He further stated that on the day of the incident, his son had an exam which he wrote. He added that the boy came home with no blood stains on his shirt. However, as per sources in the CBI, the boy has confessed that he committed the crime. CBI sources said that the boy will be produced in the juvenile court.

Representational image. Reuters

Pradyuman's father Varun Thakur had earlier told Firstpost that he is happy with the way the courts are approaching the case and that he believes that justice will be done. The Supreme Court took a tough stand by issuing notices to the HRD ministry, the CBI, the CBSE and as well the Haryana government.

"We had demanded that a commission be constituted to investigate further, which would also establish the accountability of the school's management," said Pradyuman's father of the victim who was insistent that a CBI inquiry be carried out, since the very beginning. Initially, Ashok Kumar, a bus conductor in one of the school buses was declared as the prime suspect and arrested. He is still in jail.

CBI, in a statement, said that the conductor hasn't been given a clean chit. Pradyuman's parents have been blaming the CBI for protecting the main accused. After the incident, the Haryana police arrested two senior officials (the regional and HR heads) in the Ryan administration. To evade the possibility of arrest, the Ryan management submitted an anticipatory bail plea in the Punjab-Haryana High Court.

The murder took place during the morning assembly session, before getting into their classes and that throws a cordon of doubt on the possibility of a conductor (an outsider) walking in and killing the child with a knife. The parents of the victim, as well as, some other parents are finding it difficult to believe the statement made by the bus conductor. It is important to note that once the case was handed over to the CBI, the direction of the investigation took a complete U-turn.

In an earlier conversation with Firstpost, Varun Thakur's lawyer Sushil Tekriwal had raised questions on the way the CBI was delaying the investigations. He also asked why the CBI advocates weren't present when the bail plea of the Pintos was being heard in the Punjab-Haryana High Court. "I suspect that the Haryana government is trying to shield the Pinto family (which owns the Ryan International Group of Institutions)".

The article was translated from Firstpost Hindi by Pallavi Rebbapragada