Ryan International School murder case: Bombay HC adjourns hearing on trustees' bail plea till 14 September

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing till Thursday morning, in the anticipatory bail plea filed by Ryan International School trustees in a case involving the murder of a Class II student at their Gurugram branch. The adjournment follows an intervention application, filed by the father of seven-year-old Pradhyuman Thakur, who was murdered inside the Haryana school on 8 September, seeking dismissal of the anticipatory transit bail plea filed by the school trustees. Varun Chandra Thakur intervened through his lawyers Sushil K Tekriwal and Mamta Tekriwal in the hearing of the bail plea of the three school trustees, Augustine F Pinto, Grace Pinto and Ryan Pinto. [caption id=“attachment_4039033” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of people protest outside Ryan International School in Gurugram. PTI[/caption] Apprehending their arrest, the trustees of the St Xaviers Education Trust, which manages the Ryan International Schools across India, filed the plea on Monday. At the hearing on Wednesday afternoon, the Pintos’ lawyer Nitin Pradhan argued they had not been served the notices by the lawyers of Thakur who sought to become an intervenor in the matter on Wednesday. Thakur’s lawyers countered by arguing that they had served the notices, but the Pintos’ lawyers refused to accept them. After the brief hearing, Justice AS Gadkari adjourned the bail plea matter till Thursday morning, said lawyer Manoj Dhall, who is representing another another intervenor, the Parents Group for Students Welfare (PGSW). Besides the victim’s father, and PGSW, another intervenor is lawyer Gunratan Sadavarte representing the Ambedkar Students Association which had actively raised the Rohith Vemula suicide case almost two years ago. The Pintos’ plea for anticipatory transit bail to move an appropriate judicial authority in Haryana came up for hearing on Tuesday when the court posted it for Wednesday. Pradhyuman was found with his throat slit inside the school’s washroom within an hour after his father dropped him off last Friday morning. A Haryana Police team on Tuesday questioned several staffers and manager of the Ryan International School at the Kandivali headquarters, and examined documents and records. However, the three main trustees remained elusive while the details of the other trustees were not known. The case has snowballed into a major national issue concerning safety and security of children in private schools, with vociferous protests by parents and activists outside the Ryan schools in several states including Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.