Who is Pradyuman Thakur
Pradyuman Thakur attended Ryan International School in Gurugram, Haryana, India, when he was seven years old. On September 8, 2017, his body was discovered outside a school washroom with neck injuries, and he eventually died from his wounds. A bus conductor who assisted in transporting the injured Pradyuman Thakur was charged with murder and purportedly confessed to authorities, but was ultimately judged to be innocent. He was eventually accused with framing for the murder by four police officers.
An unknown sixteen-year-old student from the same school has since been charged with his murder after the case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation. As of December 2021, the lawsuit is still pending, and the trial has yet to begin.
Negligence of school authority
Following the assassination of Pradyuman Thakur, parents of several students filed a police report alleging that the school had been negligent in maintaining security measures, citing a collapsed boundary wall that allowed access to school grounds, as well as several malfunctioning CCTV cameras on the school grounds, which led to the arrest of several school officials. Haryana Police sent a team to Mumbai to look into the Ryan International School’s owners.
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The Central Board of Secondary Education investigated Ryan International School and reported to the Supreme Court that school officials were irresponsible in preserving the school’s safety and security. The CBSE also discovered that the school failed to disclose the event to the police when it occurred, despite the fact that the victim’s family had contacted the police.
The Prime Suspect
On November 7, 2017, the CBI detained a 16-year-old Ryan International School class XI student for the murder of Pradyuman Thakur. The student was one of the first on the scene and had told school officials that another student had been harmed. While the unnamed student was questioned as a witness immediately after the murder, the Haryana Police later declared that they discovered no evidence that he was guilty for Pradyuman Thakur’s killing at the time.
When various evidences came to the possesion of the CBI, the unnamed student confessed to the murder during questioning in front of his father, independent witnesses, and a juvenile welfare official.
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The Killer is Juvenile or Adult
The Juvenile Justice Board determined on December 20, 2017, that the anonymous student would be handled as an adult and would face a regular trial in court after performing evaluations on his mental and physical status.
The student “had the sufficient competence to appreciate the implications of his acts,” according to the Juvenile Justice Board. The Board also requested an investigation into the unnamed student’s conduct, citing claims of “aggressive” behavior at school. A request from family of Pradyuman Thakur for the unnamed student to be tried as an adult was also heard by the Board.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court heard an appeal in 2018 against the JJB’s decision to try the anonymous student as an adult. They sent the case back to the JJB to be reconsidered. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which halted all proceedings in the case until the question of whether the student should be tried as a juvenile or an adult was resolved. The trial has yet to begin as of December 2021, as the Supreme Court has yet to make a ruling on the matter.
Public outrage and Criticism
Death of Pradyuman Thakur sparked great public outrage and criticism for the lack of safety in Delhi NCR schools. Following the investigation into Thakur’s death, a number of official assessments of Ryan International School’s operations were done, and improved recommendations for school safety were released by both State and Union governmental agencies.
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