So bad is crime probe in India that a closer view at cases exposes the sleuths further.
Two months after seven-year-old student Pradyuman Thakur was found with his throat slit in the washroom of Ryan International in Gurgaon, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) announced the arrest of a Class XI student of the same school for his murder.
The minor’s arrest for the heinous crime came as a shocker because the Gurgaon police, earlier investigating the case, was armed with a “confession” by the school’s bus conductor Ashok Kumar. It was even ready to file a chargesheet when the CBI was handed over the probe. A CBI spokesperson says the agency narrowed the probe down to the 16-year-old accused on the basis of CCTV footage besides forensic and scientific evidence. He offers no comments on how the local police caught the wrong person even when the September 8 footage shows the Class XI boy entering the washroom with Pradyuman.
This is not the first case the police have botched up. The rape and murder case of a minor schoolgirl in Shimla four months ago is one such. With the CBI handling that case now, eight cops, including an inspector-general, are in jail for an attempted cover-up job.
The CBI is now struggling with a case where one of the accused had died in police custody and the crucial evidence perhaps lost forever. The agency is preparing for a narco test on the five other accused, who are out on bail. The accused, including a close relative of the Himachal Pradesh law officer, were granted bail as the CBI failed to file a chargesheet in the case. “There isn’t watertight evidence to present in the court,” says a senior CBI official. “Even if we do file a chargesheet, it will not stand scrutiny in the court and the case will be thrown out. It is a pity that we have to rely on lie detector and narco tests to solve cases. These are just tools to corroborate evidence and not even admissible in court.”
This story is from the November 20, 2017 edition of Outlook.
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This story is from the November 20, 2017 edition of Outlook.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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