How Ryan Student Pradhuman Thakur Was Killed: Sequence of Events

New Delhi/Gurugram: A four-member CBI team on Thursday visited Gurugram with the 16-year-old student accused of killing a Class 2 student of Ryan International School here to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the September 8 murder.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials took the accused, whose name is being withheld, to the Sohna Market where he is said to have purchased the knife used in the murder of seven-year-old Pradhuman Thakur. The Class 11 suspect is also from the same school and is said to have murdered Pradhuman in a bid to create a situation whereby the upcoming examinations would get postponed. The CBI's stunning revelation has derailed the Haryana Police version of the gory crime which led to the arrest of a school bus conductor, Ashok Kumar. Pradhuman's family had always insisted that the conductor was being framed.

On Thursday, Gurugram Police Commissioner Sandeep Khirwar was on the defensive. He maintained that Kumar was arrested on the basis of "evidence" but that the investigation was far from over when the CBI took over the case. A CBI source told IANS that "the CBI team and the accused first visited the Sohna Market where he bought a knife and then went to the school to recreate the scene of crime... how he carried the knife to the school, where he kept it and how he killed Pradhuman".

The accused student, who is the son of an advocate, informed his interrogators in his six hours questioning that minutes after killing Pradhuman, he had informed a gardener and a teacher, saying "a boy was lying injured in the toilet of the school premises". It was the same toilet from where Pradhuman was found with his throat slit on the morning of September 8 - minutes after his father left him in the school.

The CBI said it has questioned over 125 people in connection with the case, including some current and former employees of Ryan school. Asked over the Haryana Police initial probe in which two knives were claimed to be found as suspected murder weapons, the CBI clarified: "We were handed over only one knife by the police along with all the case property. The knife was recovered by the Haryana Police from the toilet box." The arrested student has been handed over to the CBI by a juvenile court for questioning.

Barun Chandra Thakur, the father of the deceased, wants the case should be tried in a general court even though the suspect has been declared a juvenile.

IANS