Ryan school murder case: Bail denied to juvenile accused

A sessions court had earlier reserved the order after hearing arguments of the counsel for the accused, the CBI and the complainant.

The bail application of the 16-year-old accused of killing an eight-year-old boy at a private school in Gurgaon’s Bhondsi area was rejected by the special children’s court on Monday.

The seven-year-old student of Ryan International School, Pradhyumn Thakur, was found dead in the school toilet, on September 8, 2017. (HT File Photo)

The accused is lodged at the observation home in Faridabad since November 11 after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) apprehended him on November 7 on charges of murdering the Class 2 student of the school.

The accused, a student of the same school, was produced before the court on January 3 and his custody was extended until January 17.

The CBI lawyer and the defence counsels argued that granting bail to the accused would be detrimental to the case in which the agency has not filed a chargesheet yet.

The accused student’s lawyer Sandeep Aneja moved an application under rule 10 (5) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and protection of Children) Model rules, 2016, seeking his release on bail. Aneja said his client deserved bail under the act.

The schoolboy was found with his throat slit outside a school toilet on September 8 last year.

The Gurgaon Police had claimed that the crime was committed by a school bus conductor, which was later refuted by the central agency. The agency said the teenager had killed his schoolmate in a bid to get the school closed so that a parent-teacher meeting and an examination could be deferred.

On December 20, the board had ordered the juvenile accused will be tried as an adult.

The board on December 15 dismissed the bail plea application of the juvenile accused. The additional district and session judge JS Kundu also ordered in-camera proceedings for all future hearings in the case.