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CBI files chargesheet against four police officials in school murder case
An 80-odd page chargesheet was filed before Aman Inder Singh, special judicial magistrate of Punjab and Haryana high court, on Wednesday. The agency gave a clean chit to the private school.
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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a supplementary chargesheet against four Gurugram police officers for falsely implicating a school bus conductor and for fabricating documents against him in the 2017 school murder case.
An 80-odd page chargesheet was filed before Aman Inder Singh, special judicial magistrate of Punjab and Haryana high court, on Wednesday. The agency gave a clean chit to the private school.
The probe agency, which had named a juvenile as the main accused in the case and filed a chargesheet in February 2018, said in the supplementary chargesheet that “there is sufficient evidence for prosecution” against four police officials who allegedly implicated the bus conductor and accused him of murder and sexual assault.
Birem Singh, assistant commissioner of police, Narender Khatana, then station house officer of Bhondsi police station, Shamsher Singh, sub-inspector and the investigating officer for two days, and Subhash Chand, EASI, are the four officials named.
Khatana refused to comment on the matter, while the three other officials could not be reached for comment.
Sushil Tekriwal, counsel for the father of the victim, said that the police had forced Kumar to confess and had fabricated the documents in the case. “Police officers have made fake daily diary (DD) entries. They had prepared the first document of the case in the mortuary on September 8, 2017, where they had shown Ashok Kumar as a suspect without a complaint and a case was registered. They knew since day one there was no sexual assault. Still, they forced him to accept that he had attempted to sexually assault the victim,” he said.
Tekriwal alleged that the investigating officer had prepared the documents without visiting the crime spot. “They had tried to give a clean chit to the juvenile and recorded his statement before the Sohna court on September 15 as a witness under Section 164 CrPc without verifying his friend’s statement. Even the gardener had informed the police that the juvenile had informed him during the incident, but no one questioned him. Police had also tried to create pressure on the physical education teacher to record his statement in favour of juvenile, which he had denied,” he said.
The bus conductor was the initial suspect in the murder of an eight-year-old student of a private school in Bhondsi. He had accused the police of assassinating his character and for torturing him. He was arrested on September 8, 2017, but was acquitted by a special court on February 28, 2018.
Kumar alleged that he was tortured, beaten, hung upside down and his head submerged in water by police officials to obtain a confession. “I was asked to parade before the media and they humiliated me in front of my family and public. Since then, I have had sleepless nights and I am still trying to regain my lost self-esteem and reputation,” he said.
The father of the deceased, who is the complainant in the case, said that the CBI has delayed filing supplementary chargesheet and they are yet to get justice. “The police officials are also equally guilty as they tried to mislead us and tried to implicate an innocent man instead of the real culprit. Those guilty should be punished as per the law. Such incidents tarnish the image and lose trust in police,” he said.
The court has fixed January 15 for consideration of the chargesheet.
The father of the 18-year-old suspect, who was a juvenile at the time of the incident, had filed an application on January 3 with juvenile justice board (JJB) seeking interim bail for his son so that he could take his class 12 examinations between January 21 and February 15. The father had also stated that since his examination centre was in Nuh, an interim bail was necessary.
The hearing of the application is listed for Friday.
The court has dismissed a bail plea at least 15 times over the last 37 months. In May 2019, he was shifted from an observation home in Faridabad to a place of safety in Madhuban, Karnal.
