Lens Shows A Spiderweb

So bad is crime probe in India that a closer view at cases exposes the sleuths further.

- Bhavna Vij-Aurora

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.”