Cops tortured conductor to confess, says lawyer

Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, September 15

Ashok Kumar, the bus conductor at Ryan International School in Gurugram accused of murdering Pradyuman, had been tortured by the police to obtain his confessional statement, said his Rohtak-based counsel today.

“Ashok has been wrongly implicated in the case. He was brutally tortured during police remand, subjected to electric shocks and administered injections of some intoxicant or sedative prior to being presented before the media,” local advocate Mohit Verma said while speaking with mediapersons here.

Refuting the police version, the lawyer said the management of the Gurugram-based school and the police seemed to be shielding the real culprit in the case, who appeared to be some influential person.

“Ashok is being made a scapegoat in the case to protect the real culprit,” he said, adding that he would appear in the Gurugram court on behalf of Ashok on September 18.

Verma alleged that some police personnel had threatened Ashok that his children would be killed if he did not confess to having murdered the child. His confessional statement had been obtained by the police forcibly and he was not safe even in jail, Verma said.

“My client has been tortured in police custody and is being harassed in jail, where he is lodged under judicial custody. We will move an application to shift him to some other jail,” the lawyer maintained.

He asserted that Ashok had carried the injured Pradyuman and put him in a car on the directions of the school authorities. He said two schoolchildren who practised taekwondo were present in the washroom when Ashok picked up the boy while a person sporting goggles was in the corridor.