Ryan International school student murder: Bombay HC to hear trustees' bail plea today

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday will resume its hearing in the anticipatory bail plea filed by Ryan International School trustees in a case involving the murder of a Class 2 student Pradyuman at their Gurugram branch.

The HC on Wednesday had extended till Thursday the interim protection from arrest granted to the trustees of Ryan International Group.

An intervention application was on Wednesday filed by father of seven-year-old kid seeking dismissal of the anticipatory transit bail plea filed by the three school trustees trustees Augustine F Pinto, Grace Pinto and Ryan Pinto.

Apprehending their arrest, the trustees of the St Xaviers Education Trust, which manages the Ryan International Schools across India, had filed the plea on Monday.

In the application, Varun Thakur said he is the complainant in the case and the petition of the trustees is "opposed in strongest possible terms and words as the instant case being a rarest of the rare case where a brutal, diabolical, cold blooded, barbarous, demonic, unpardonable, unprovoked, hellish, cruel homicide has taken place on the campus of Ryan International School."

Pradyuman was found dead with his throat slit in the washroom of Ryan International school in Bhondsi area on Sohna Road near here on September 8.

Police allege that 42-year-old bus conductor Ashok Kumar killed him with a knife after the boy resisted an attempt to sodomise him. Kumar has been arrested.

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.

The post-mortem report of seven-year-old Pradyuman has ruled out sexual assault even as the parent of another schoolchild claimed the crime scene was tampered with even though he had cautioned otherwise.

Bus driver Saurabh Raghav has said the knife used in the killing was not kept in the bus tool box, as claimed by accused conductor Ashok Kumar, adding that police pressurised him also to admit to being an accomplice in the crime.

Varun Thakur said there were "too many loopholes" in the police theory and the school management's stand on the murder.

Pradyuman's father has moved the Supreme Court for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the case.