Is the Pradyuman Thakur murder case of Gurgaon another example of a botched-up investigation by the local police? With the CBI getting the case about 15 days after the ghastly incident, the question now is that with the lapse of valuable time, will the premier investigation agency of the country be able to gather enough evidence to nail the accused?
It has almost been a decade, but people have still not forgotten the Aarushi murder that shook the nation in 2008. Multiple theories prevailed in the case. This was another example of a botched-up investigation by the local police, later taken over by the CBI, ending in a real mess.
The Pradyuman murder case of Gurgaon has similarly created a stir in the city, with Gurgaon Police and the CBI producing different versions of that horrific day.
In the Aarushi murder case, the police initially named the domestic help, Hemraj, as the prime suspect and started looking for him. Later, in what came as a shocker, his body was recovered from the terrace of the same house.
When the CBI jumped into the investigation, it picked up three more domestic helps — Raj Kumar, Krishna and Vijay Mandal. The trio was interrogated at length and subjected to the lie-detector test. Later, unable to establish their involvement, Aarushi's parents — Dr Rajesh Talwar and Dr Nupur Talwar — were held for the murder, with the motive of the crime still missing.
However, when the CBI could not place the jigsaw in place, in the absence of any proof or motive behind the crime, the Talwars were finally acquitted by the High Court. And "no one killed Aarushi" became the talking point of the entire country.
The recent case of the murder of 8-year-old Pradyuman Thakur of Ryan International School, Bhondsi, also seems to be following a similar pattern. The shoddy and botched-up investigation of Gurgaon Police and the rushed arrest of Ashok Kumar — the conductor of the school bus — followed by another theory of the CBI when it arrested a Class XI student of the school, has made the story even murkier.
The CCTV footage showed four people inside the washroom. In the absence of any other concrete proof, the CBI is still struggling to put the pieces of the murder mystery together.
