Twist in Ryan school murder case: CBI apprehends class XI student for allegedly killing Pradyuman

Ryan International School murder case: A class 2 student was found with his throat slit in a school washroom on September 8, following which school bus conductor Ashok Kumar was arrested. (File photo)

In a new twist in the Pradyuman Thakur murder case, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has apprehended a class XI student of Ryan International School in Gurugram for the murder of the seven-year-old student. The CBI on Wednesday said the Class XI boy allegedly committed the murder to get the scheduled exams and parent-teacher meeting postponed. The student will be produced before a juvenile court later in the day. The agency also cleared the school bus conductor who was earlier arrested as a suspect. The accused student was picked up from his home in Sohna on Tuesday night, CBI sources said. He is currently being interrogated, the sources said.

“We have apprehended a Class 11 boy for the murder of Pradyuman Thakur. The accused planned the crime to get exams and parent-teacher meeting postponed. During the probe, he was seen coming out of the toilet around the time of the crime in CCTV footage. So he has become the prime suspect,” a CBI spokesperson said. Also Read: Ryan International School murder case: All you need to know

He added, “The bus conductor Ashok had no role to play in the murder. We are, however, still probing the destruction of evidence angle in the case.”
CBI sources said that the accused was weak in studies and was worried that in the upcoming examinations he was going to fail. “That is why he thought of doing something sensational to get the exams postponed,” a CBI official said.

Seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur was found dead inside the washroom of Gurugram’s Ryan International School on the morning of September 8, 2017. Pradyuman’s body was discovered by fellow school students at around 8 am with his throat slit and a knife near his body. Postmortem later revealed that a 18×2-cm neck-to-ear cut was what killed the child.

Gurgaon police had initially arrested the school bus conductor in the case alleging that he had tried to sodomise the victim and later killed him when he tried to raise an alarm. The case was later transferred to the CBI by the state government.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Monday asked the Punjab and Haryana High Court to decide within ten days the anticipatory bail pleas of three Ryan International Group trustees in the case. An apex court bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra passed the directions on a plea moved by the boy’s father challenging the extension of the interim protection from arrest granted to the three trustees.

Ryan International Group trustees, who are based in Mumbai, had earlier approached the Bombay High Court as they apprehended arrest in the case after the school was accused of negligence in the death of the seven-year-old boy. The Bombay High Court had rejected their transit anticipatory bail plea but granted them interim protection from arrest for a day to enable them to approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Earlier in October, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had told the Supreme Court that a fact-finding committee set up by it had concluded that the incident occurred due to the “negligence of the school authority”.