Lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir, who successfully defended dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in their daughter Aarushi's murder, has now been hired by the family of the Class XI student, an accused in the Ryan schoolboy murder case, according to a Hindustan Times report. The similarities between the Aarushi and Ryan murder cases don't end here.
The lawyer confirmed to HT that he will defend the juvenile, accused by the CBI of slitting seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur's throat on the morning of September 8 near the toilet at Gurgaon's Ryan International School, within an hour of the child's father dropping him off at school. The report quotes Mir as saying, “Preliminary discussions have taken place with the father of the juvenile accused. Once the terms and conditions are formally finalised, I will be defending the boy."
The Class 11 student was produced before the Juvenile Justice Board after his custody ended on Wednesday on November 11. The CBI had also taken him to the school to recreate the crime scene. He is now in an observational home in Faridabad.
On November 22, Ashok Kumar, the bus conductor who was accused by the Haryana Police for murdering Pradyamn walked free from Bhondsi Jail on November 22. His wife recently alleged that he was tortured and forced to confess. READ | Bus conductor Ashok was tortured, sedated to confess, alleges wife
Pradyuman's family had opposed the bail given to Kumar, stating that the investigation was not over yet. The CBI has stated that it has not given a clean chit to anyone in the case.
The juvenile accused's father told HT that he was hiring the best team of lawyers to defend his child. “If my son had killed a boy would he be able to behave normally. After all he is also a child. On the day of the murder, he attended his tuition classes that evening and was absolutely normal,” he said.
He said that Gurgaon police were treating his son as a witness, but the CBI accused him of murder. He had also alleged that the CBI was torturing his son which has been strongly refuted by the agency.
In a sensational twist to the case, the CBI recently announced that it had apprehended the senior student in connection with Pradyuman's murder rejecting the Gurgaon Police's theory that the killing was the handiwork of school bus conductor Ashok Kumar.
According to the agency, the Class 11 student, believed to be weak in studies, allegedly slit Pradyuman's throat to get the school to declare a holiday in order to defer a scheduled parent-teacher meeting (PTM) and an examination.
(With agency inputs)