Hathras student murder: Teen chargesheeted, family of jailed school director seeks ‘justice’

But after investigations took a turn with the detention of the teenager, a student from the same school, Dinesh’s cousin Rahul is now questioning the pace of investigation, claiming that his uncle and brother were in jail on “wrong charges”. The villagers, he claimed, are now “seeing the family differently”.

“My grandfather, Dorilal Baghel, died on November 16, as he could not take the pain. The villagers see us in a different way now. All that we earned over the years is gone now,” he alleged two days after the minor student was apprehended for allegedly perpetrating the incident so that classes would be cancelled.

The police said the teenager “believed that the murder would lead to the boarding school being shut down, allowing him to go home”. Significantly, the murder charge on the five original suspects has now been dropped, although they still face charges of evidence tampering.

The sudden turn of investigation — and change in the police “narrative” — has left the family of the victim baffled. According to the victim’s father, this change happened “overnight” after the transfer of the Station House Officer at Sahpau police station on November 4. The police station is investigating the case.

“Even two months after my son’s death, I don’t know why he was killed… There were only 25 students sleeping in the room. A boy was murdered inside the hostel room by another student and no one saw anything? That’s not possible,” he said.

Meanwhile, police maintain that the teen was apprehended “after due consideration” of new evidence. Police said the teen used a towel to strangle the nine-year-old student.

“We have apprehended the minor after he confessed to having strangled the child,” Hathras Superintendent of Police Chiranjeev Nath Sinha said.

“The principle of justice says that no person who is guilty of committing a crime should be left out and no innocent person should be punished… Prima facie the evidence that we got and the evidence that we collected during the later part of our investigation have been cross-checked and verified and we have reached this conclusion after due consideration,” SP Sinha said.

On the five suspects’ previous “confessions” before the police, the SP said the new evidence didn’t support these statements.

“Chargesheet is a termination point of a case, and different angles are explored before a chargesheet is filed. We had not filed the chargesheet against them earlier, but did so against the teenager,” he said.