CBI to question Class 11 student accused of killing junior today: All the developments in case so far

In a stunning new development in the investigation into the murder of a seven-year-old boy in Gurugram’s Ryan International School in September, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday  detained a Class 11 student in connection with the crime . The central agency also secured a three-day custody of the boy.

According to an India Today report, the teenager will be subjected to around seven hours of questioning by CBI sleuths, from 10 am to 5 pm, on Thursday. During the course of the interrogation, he is also likely to be taken to the spot of crime and then to the shop from where he got the knife, the report added.

The Class 2 student was found dead on the morning of 8 September with his throat slit by a sharp-edged weapon.

The teenaged boy’s arrest has also brought the stark discrepancy in the investigative lines of the CBI and the Gurugram Police under the lens, and has raised critical questions about how the latter operates. The police had earlier held the school bus conductor, Ashok Kumar, responsible for the crime.

But the CBI later gave Kumar a clean chit , raising doubts over a possible nexus between Ryan International School and the Gurugram Police.

CBI’s revelations

According to sources in the CBI quoted by IANS, the senior student was  seen with a knife inside the school campus  on the day the child was killed.

According to The Indian Express , the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) in Gurgaon allowed the CBI to question the accused student for three days. The CBI is learnt to have told the JJB that the boy had “admitted to his involvement in the murder”.

CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said the Class 11 student was detained on Tuesday night after an “inspection of the crime spot, scrutiny of CCTV footage, call records, statements and questioning of several people” revealed that he had carried a knife inside the school campus on the day of the crime and used it to kill his junior schoolmate. “The weapon used in the commission of the crime is a knife which was recovered initially by police in Gurugram. It is now with us,” Dayal told reporters.

He added the detained student was academically weak and “wanted to have an examination and parent-teacher meeting postponed”. Pradhyuman was a “random target”, he added.

According to  Z_ee News_ , the CBI further said that the 16-year-old student later flushed the knife in the washroom.

The CBI took over the case on 22 September from Gurugram Police, nearly two weeks after the incident.

Conductor framed?

These developments have sparked theories about the botched investigation originally conducted by the Gurugram Police. Reports now suggest that the CBI may probe a possible Ryan International School-Gurugram Police nexus in the murder case. CNN-News18 also quoted CBI sources as saying that the police may have even tried to destroy the evidence.

Given that the CBI came to its conclusion based on the same CCTV footage also available to the police, it makes things intriguing. “We have come to the conclusion on the basis of CCTV footage, forensic evidence and scientific evidence. The student has been apprehended. He remains our prime suspect,” the  CBI spokesperson said .

The police had originally managed to secure a confession from the conductor, and had come to its conclusion based on this. The conductor’s family, however, claimed that he was being “framed” in the murder. The victim’s family also accused the school of a cover-up, and had alleged the police had done a shoddy job. “Ashok was framed due to pressure from the school. He was beaten up and given an injection,” the conductor’s wife had told CNN-News18.

It was only after sustained pressure from the parents and the media that the Manohar Lal Khattar government in Haryana transferred the case to the CBI.

Another discrepancy in the police’s investigation was brought to the fore when CBI ruled out the sexual assault angle in the case. According to ANI, CBI investigators dispelled the police’s theory that the seven-year-old was sexually assaulted. An earlier report on  CNN-News18  had corroborated the CBI’s claim. The report said that the doctor who conducted the autopsy in the case had also said that the Class 2 student was not sexually assaulted. “The second point that came out in the report is that the child died due to excessive bleeding. There was no sexual assault on the minor and no semen marks were found on his school dress,” the report quoted Dr Deepak Mathur as saying.

‘CBI is framing my son’

The detained boy’s father, meanwhile, has claimed that his son is being framed. He said that the CBI told him that his son wanted to skip exams and hence committed the crime. “My son is innocent and is being harassed. He was forced to sign the confession”, he told PTI.

According to the India Today report, the father, explaining the sequence of events in detail, said, “We have been cooperating with the police and CBI. They questioned my son four times at their headquarters. They also called us to the school for questioning. They even came to our house. I reached the school at 11:20 in the morning. They made us wait till midnight. Then they told me that my son has committed a murder. They told me that my son is being held for murder. After his arrest, they made me wait for two hours. They said they won’t let me go till I sign his confession. Finally, I left the CBI headquarters at 2 am. I feel sad for the boy, but my son is being framed.”

However, the CBI claimed that a detailed analysis of call data records also pointed to the involvement of the boy. The investigating agency said the recovery of the murder weapon in a commode in the bathroom also points towards the boy’s culpability.

According to The Indian Express report, CBI sources claimed that the boy had bought the knife from a local market. They claimed that while the act was pre-planned, the victim had not been chosen beforehand. “It was a coincidence that the child was alone in the toilet when the suspect decided to act,” said the CBI spokesperson.

‘Faulty investigation not department’s fault’ 

With the CBI’s findings in the case coming as an embarrassment to the Haryana Police, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Wednesday sought to defend them by saying that the investigators were yet to complete their probe. “The Haryana Police had not completed its investigation. When investigations were on, a demand was raised that the matter be handed over to the CBI. It was handed over to them. CBI is now conducting investigations. It is their job, not ours,” he said, according to PTI.

Asked if he would act against the state DGP for the failure of police in the case, Khattar said that one cannot reveal much when an investigation is on. Pressed for comments, he replied, “I have said that when investigations are on, things are not complete. Our investigations were not complete when it was handed over to CBI.”

With inputs from agencies