Ranchi court hears plea challenging CBI closure report in school student death case

Ranchi, June 12 (IANS) A special CBI court on Friday heard a protest petition filed by the father of deceased school student Vinay Mahto, challenging the closure report submitted by the agency in the high-profile case.

Partial arguments were held during the hearing, following which the court fixed a date next week for further proceedings.

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Khushboo Kataruka raised questions over the CBI’s closure report and contested its findings.

The case dates back nearly a decade. Vinay Mahto, a 12-year-old Class 7 student of Sapphire International School in Ranchi, was brutally murdered on the night of February 4-5 in 2016, inside the school hostel premises.

His blood-soaked body was found the next morning near the corridor of the teachers’ staff quarters on the campus located along Ranchi-Khunti Road.

In the immediate aftermath, Ranchi police termed the incident an ‘honour killing’. As per the police theory, Vinay had developed an inclination towards the daughter of a Hindi teacher at the school, Naseeya Hussain. Enraged by this, the teacher’s son, a Class 11 student, allegedly attacked Vinay with the intent to kill and later threw him from the first floor.

The police had arrested four persons in the case — the teacher Naseeya Hussain, her husband Mohammad Arif, and their two minor children — and sent them to jail.

However, in July 2018, the Juvenile Justice Board acquitted both minors due to lack of evidence, following which a district court ordered a fresh hearing in the matter.

Alleging serious lapses in the police probe, including destruction of forensic evidence, Vinay’s father approached the Jharkhand High Court, which handed over the case to the CBI in July 2022.

The case took a new turn last month when the CBI submitted its closure report in court, rejecting the murder and criminal conspiracy angles and terming Vinay’s death an accident.

Dissatisfied with the findings, Vinay’s father, Manbahal Mahto, has challenged the CBI’s conclusions through the protest petition, which is now under consideration before the court.

–IANS

snc/skp/vd