A Gurugram court, on 8 January, rejected the bail plea of the 16-year-old student accused of killing 7-year-old Pradyumn Thakur at the Ryan International School in September 2017.
The Gurugram court was supposed to pronounce its order after the defence counsel claimed the chargesheet in the matter was not filed within one month as prescribed in the Juvenile Justice Act, and he was not given the required documents. Opposing the contention, the CBI said that under CrPC provisions, the mandatory period for filing a chargesheet is 90 days.
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The counsel for the CBI had said that "circumstances have changed" as the accused had been declared an adult by the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB). Therefore, the chargesheet needed to be filed within three months.
Pradyumn was found with his throat slit in the school's washroom on 8 September 2017. The Gurugram Police had claimed the crime was committed by a school bus conductor, which was later refuted by the CBI.
The probe agency later claimed the teenager had killed Pradyumn in a bid to get the school closed so as to defer an impending examination as well as a parent-teacher meeting.
The JJB had, on 20 December, held that the teenager would be tried as an adult and directed that he be produced before the Gurugram sessions court. The JJB had noted that the accused was mature enough to recognise the consequences of his actions.
If convicted, the accused will stay in a correctional home till he is 21 years old, after which the court can shift him to a jail or grant him bail, it had earlier said.
The board had earlier rejected the bail plea of the Class 11 student.
The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 lowered the age of juveniles from 18 years to 16 years for heinous crimes such as rape, murder and dacoity-cum-murder, which warrant at least seven years of imprisonment.
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