The police had claimed that the knife they recovered was a part of the bus tool kit. The bus driver, however, maintained that there was no knife in the box.
A forensic team that had visited the spot where seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur was killed in Gurugram's Ryan International School, had found a knife from a commode in the toilet. This was after the police had claimed that they had already recovered a blood-soaked knife from Ashok Kumar, the bus conductor who was arrested for the murder.
This two-weapon theory had blown the lid off the Gurugram police's botched-up probe, which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has now rejected. The agency has claimed that the knife found in the commode was the one actually used for the crime.
The police had claimed that the knife they recovered was a part of the bus tool kit. The bus driver, however, maintained that there was no knife in the box.
On September 11, in a report titled 'Key questions remain unanswered; Victim's kin allege evidence tampering', DNA had highlighted the loopholes in the police probe. The report had questioned how could a bus conductor drag a child to the washroom, sexually assault him, and then kill him within a span of 10 minutes.
According to the CBI, a Class XI student of the same school killed Pradyuman, while rejecting the police theory that the conductor sexually assaulted the child before slitting his throat.
Sources said the school teachers had noticed the suspect bringing a knife to school four days before the murder, but the Gurugram Police did not give any importance to this crucial bit of information.
"We would not comment on the role of the Haryana Police. We followed our line of investigation. Now, the court will decide," a CBI spokesperson said.
The crucial CCTV footage, in which the Class XI student was seen near the toilet minutes before the murder, was also ignored by the cops. "The CCTV footage shows the suspected student pushing Pradyuman towards the washroom," a CBI source said.
The agency also found out that the student was the first to inform the gardener about the incident. "After scientific analysis of the crime scene and CCTV footage, and questioning of several people, we zeroed down to the Class XI student as our prime suspect," a senior CBI officer said.
Pradyuman's father Varun Thakur said the family always suspected that the case was being mishandled and the bus conductor was arrested in a hurry. "We had been telling the police to question other people but they were focused on the bus conductor, who was seen coming out of the washroom before Pradyuman came out with his throat slit," he said.
As per the Haryana Police, the footage from a security camera outside the bathroom showed the victim crawling out of the bathroom before collapsing next to a wall. It also showed Ashok entering the bathroom and exiting it, before the boy crawled out.
In another cellphone video shot after the crime, the school's junior section in-charge Anju Dudeja was seen saying that she and acting principal Neerja Batra asked the conductor to pick up Pradyuman, the cops had said. The conductor had then carried Pradyuman to the car. Gardener Harpal had said that Kumar did not have any blood stains on his clothes when he arrived at the scene.
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 "Ryan International School")
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