Ryan murder: Try teen as an adult, Pradhyumn’s father says.

GURGAON: Pradhyumn Thakur’s father Barun filed an application before the juvenile justice board (JJB) on Wednesday, pleading that the 16-year-old Class XI student detained by CBI for the murder of his son be tried as an adult.

 

Barun has written that the crime committed by the teenager+ is “heinous, barbarous, diabolical, cold-blooded and rarest of rare”. The amended Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 allows a minor offender to be tried as an adult if the age is above 16 and if the crime is heinous. “According to CBI, the manner in which Pradhyumn’s throat was slit+ in the school’s bathroom indicates the crime is chilling, horrific, monstrous and serious in nature,” Barun wrote in his application.

 

His counsel Sushil Tekriwal said the new legislation mandates that in such a case, JJB should conduct an assessment of his mental and physical capacity to commit such an offence, ability to understand consequences of the offence, and circumstances in which he allegedly committed the crime. “The Class XI student was born on April 3, 2001, and was over 16 years of age at the time of the crime,” said Tekriwal. The suspect’s father has said the boy is not guilty+ .

 

Teskriwal said JJB could demand a variety of reports — social background, social investigation, physical and mental drug assessment and preliminary assessment— to find out if the accused had the requisite mental and physical capacity to commit the the crime, and was capable of understanding its consequences.

 

This would help it effect a just and fair adjudication of the application, he said. “The postmortem report indicated the nature of injury was very serious and described the crime as heinous and gruesome.”

 

The application, which will be heard on November 22, also urged that the case be referred to a children’s sessions court as the court of the judicial magistrate first class, where it is being tried, cannot award maximum punishment. CBI apprehended the juvenile on November 7.

 

Pradhyumn, a Class II student of Ryan International School (Bhondsi), was murdered in the school’s washroom on September 8.