School Murder: Gurgaon Boy's Father Opposes Pre-Arrest Bail Pleas Of Ryan Group Trustees

The father of the seven-year-old boy murdered at the Ryan International School in Gurgaon today approached the Bombay High Court seeking to oppose the anticipatory bail pleas of the trustees of Ryan International Group.

The group's CEO, Ryan Pinto, and his parents -- Augustine Pinto, the founding chairman of the group, and Grace Pinto, its managing director -- had earlier approached the high court seeking transit anticipatory bail apprehending arrest in the case.

The Pintos sought protection from arrest till they approach the court concerned in Haryana.

When the pleas came up for hearing before Justice Ajey Gadkari today, lawyer Sushil Tekriwal informed the court that Barun Thakur, the father of the Class 2 student Pradyuman who was killed in the school in Gurgaon, was filing an application seeking to intervene and oppose the bail pleas.

Tekriwal said the application will be filed in the high court registry, following which Justice Gadkari posted the hearing of the anticipatory bail pleas of the Pintos later this afternoon.

In the application, 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 with his throat slit on the morning of September 8 in the toilet of Ryan International School in Gurgaon.

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

Thakur alleged in his application that the school's trustees were "vicariously responsible, liable, accountable, answerable for the culpability and guilt for which the bail application should be dismissed in limine."

"The remorseless, spineless and senseless approach and attitude of the school management, its directors/CEO and other top notch executives in this rarest case is absolutely inexcusable and hence, the present bail application deserves to be dismissed in toto," said the application.

Thakur said he was shocked by the trustees' statement that they are not part of the crime as they do not look after the day-to-day working of each school.

"If the top management of the school can share in the plunder and prosperity, why should they be sceptical in subjecting themselves to the clutches of law and the rule of law and to the vicarious liability when because of their negligence and ignorance, the incidents like of Pradyuman take place within the walls of a school," he said in the application.

He alleged in his petition that it appeared "Pradyuman was meticulously murdered with foolproof planning and conspiracy, otherwise how a conductor sneaked inside with a brand new knife slitting the throat in a surgically expert manner with a criminal intent to murder someone instantly within seconds.

"The conductor took the child to the hospital and thereafter the cops found him immediately to be suspicious and thereafter he immediately confessed, which raises an iota of doubt, and various missing links surface in this case for which custodial interrogation of the management is required," the application said.

Thakur also said that the evidence related to blood stains and clothes have been allegedly wiped out to compromise with the scene of crime.