Student murder: Bombay High Court gives Pinto a day’s relief

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has extended the interim relief granted to Ryan Pinto, CEO of Ryan International Group of Institutions, and his parents by one more day after the father of the child who was allegedly murdered in the Gurugram School sought to intervene and refrain the Pintos from securing transit anticipatory bail.

The petition filed by Barun Chandra Thakur alleged that the school in which his son was murdered had flouted many norms of the CBSE board and allowed outsiders into the premises during school hours. Since the Pintos had failed to implement the safety norms, there was need for custodial interrogation and hence their application should be rejected.

The hearing of the transit anticipatory bail application of Ryan Pinto and his parents Augustine and Grace Pinto before Justice A. S. Gadkari started in a packed courtroom. Advocate Niteen Pradhan, who was appearing for the Pintos, said that as the interrogation of his clients was still underway in Mumbai by a team of two Haryana cops, they were apprehensive of being arrested before they could reach Haryana and file an application for anticipatory bail there.    

However, advocate Sushil Tekriwal, appearing for the seven-year-old’s father, said that he had filed an intervention application opposing the transit ABA. His petition cast aspersions on the entire incident in which the child was allegedly killed in the washroom of the school and then taken to a hospital by the same conductor who is accused of murdering the child.

The petition alleged that while all safety norms were flouted, there seemed to be a conspiracy to shield the actual culprits.

The petition further said that though the incident had shaken the entire nation, the Pintos were remorseless and the management was neither liable nor responsible. “This horror tale could get extended upon any citizen of this country, if the sensitivity and conscience of all such school management expires and hence the present petition be dismissed in toto,” said Thakur’s intervention petition.    

However, when Advocate Pradhan informed the court that they had not been serviced the petition, Tekriwal told the court that though he had tried to service the petition to the Pintos, they had refused to accept it.

The court directed Tekriwal to hand over the petition to Pradhan and posted the matter for hearing on Thursday. The court extended the interim relief it had granted to the Pintos for a day on Tuesday, by another day.