Pradyumn, a student of Class 2, was found dead in the school toilet with his throat slit by a sharp-edged weapon on the morning of September 8. The same day, Gurgaon police arrested bus conductor Ashok Kumar but failed to satisfy the victim’s family or establish a motive, leading to the probe being given to the CBI.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) detained a Class 11 student of the same school and said the older boy allegedly committed the murder to get examinations and a parent-teacher meeting postponed.

Barun Chandra Thakur, the father of the victim Pradyuman Thakur, asked Hindustan Times how the police special investigation team (SIT) failed to identify and investigate a student, who was not only visible in surveillance footage but was also the first to report the crime.

“We were never satisfied with the theory of the Gurgaon police,” he said.

“Why did the Haryana police ignore the CCTV footage? This was either deliberate or it was done to divert attention from the school management,” he alleged.

Thakur’s lawyer Sushil Tekriwal said the arrest of a 42-year-old school bus conductor hours after the crime indicated bungling of the probe. “We have been insisting from Day 1 that the police botched up the case.”

The bjp led government Haryana police, however, denied all allegations of a lapse in the probe and said any missing link in the case was probably because the investigation was abruptly transferred to the CBI. “The case was transferred otherwise our investigation could have gone in that direction as well,” said Haryana director general of police, BS Sandhu.

Ashok Bakshi, deputy commissioner of police (South Gurgaon) who headed the SIT, said they had received no official communication from the CBI. “The investigation was conducted by us and handed over to the agency and they are now working on it,” he said.

The agency claimed its investigators were still probing charges of destruction of evidence against the school management. But activists based in Gurgaon said the scale of the alleged botch-up raised questions.

“Mistakes do happen but such a major faux pas by the police needs some answering. If Ashok Kumar has been deliberately framed, then it is a heinous crime,” said SK Sharma, an activist whose son also studies at Ryan International School.

“What was the need to commit that the chargesheet will be filed within a week? From day one, the police fixed responsibility on a single person who was also the most vulnerable,” said Gurgaon-based lawyer Rajiv Kaushik.

Family members of Ashok Kumar questioned why the police had made the conductor confess in front of a camera. “They beat him so badly that there was no way out for him but accepting the crime,” alleged Ami Chand, Kumar’s father.