Gurugram Student Murder: Parents Demand Action Against Ryan International School; Conductor 'Confesses'

Gurugram: Angry parents gathered outside Ryan International School in Gurugram on Saturday to resume their protest for action against school authorities over the murder of a Class 2 student.

A bus conductor was arrested on Friday evening and police said he had confessed to slitting the seven-year-old's throat after a failed attempt to sexually abuse the child. The knife used to commit the crime was found next to the boy’s body in the school toilet on Friday morning.

The accused will be produced before a court at noon on Saturday, but the victim's parents along with families of other students have demanded that school authorities be booked as well.

“Even we as parents are not allowed inside the classrooms or in school corridors. How then did the school authorities allow bus staff in toilets used by the children? We want the school principal and the person in-charge that day to be booked as well," the father of another student at the school told News18.

It emerged on Saturday that the school does not have a full-time principal currently and the duties of a principal were being discharged by coordinator Neerja Batra.

According to news agency ANI, the victim’s father visited the Gurugram police commissioner’s office on Saturday morning, demanding action against the management of Ryan International School. The father, who works with a private firm in Gurugran, has accused the school administration of negligence and said he was not told how critical his child was.

"They told me his health had deteriorated suddenly. They did not take care of my son. He could have been saved if he had been taken to a hospital in time," the grieving father said on Friday. His daughter studies in Class 5 of the same school.

There was heavy police deployment outside the school to avoid a repeat of Friday’s scuffle when protesters vandalised school property, leading to the arrest of two of them.

The brutal murder in the upmarket Gurugram school evoked widespread horror, prompting the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights to visit the school and the hospital where the child was taken. The apex body for child rights has recommended that a case of negligence be registered against the management of the school.

"We have told the police that a case of negligence be registered against the school management as we have found that the school did not undertake police verification of teaching and non-teaching staff," said Priyank Kanoongo, Member RTE & Education, NCPCR.

In 2016, the body of a six-year-old student of the school's Vasant Kunj branch in south Delhi was found in a water tank. The principal and a teacher were booked for negligence in May this year.